We explore the effectiveness of the clawback provision of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act as a deterrent to earnings manipulations. Using a sample of firms that issued “high concern” earnings restatements, we estimate the career and monetary benefits the CEO...

We explore whether clawback provisions (i.e. Dodd-Frank and SOX) can mitigate agency problems by deterring the executives from manipulating earnings in an effort to boost their incentive compensation. We estimate the direct and indirect gains executives receive as a result of manipulating...

Although compensation contracts rarely include cash holdings as a factor, we show that high cash holdings can be used by executives in the ex post bargaining over compensation. An increase of cash holdings by 10% of assets corresponds to about $2.7 million in additional CEO total compensation....