This paper studies the impact of external reference values on managerial compensation contracts. We consider the effect of adoption of non-binding pay nfirms on actal remuneration behavior using a unique country example. We find that introduction of pay nfirms changed the reference values for...

We develop a tractable equilibrium model of competing firms in an industry to show how the distribution of firm qualities, moral hazard, and product market characteristics interact to affect firm size, managerial compensation, and market structure. Equilibrium effects cause different...

Executive compensation serves as a metric by which investors measure the quality of a firm's governance. In this paper, I explore how the signaling role of executive compensation impacts the compensation decisions of boards. I show that reputational concerns often cause boards to adopt pay...

Are firms' financial disclosure decisions affected by executive compensation at other firms? We find that a CEO's pay gap relative to the highest CEO pay among industry peers, defined as industry tournament incentives, can lead to distortions in corporate financial disclosures. Our analyses show...

The 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) expanded the impact of IRC Section 162(m) by disallowing deductions for any compensation over $1 million paid to top executives. Under prior law, qualified performance-based pay was exempt from the $1 million cap. We examine whether TCJA affected firms' CEO...

I study the effect of passive institutional ownership on CEO compensation duration by exploiting exogenous variation in passive ownership associated with Russell Index reconstitution. A one-standard-deviation increase in passive ownership leads to a 0.46-standard-deviation increase in...

In 2005, the perception that wealthy executives were being rewarded for failure led Congress to ban Chapter 11 firms from paying retention bonuses to senior managers. Under the new law, debtors could still pay bonuses to executives – but only “incentive” bonuses triggered by accomplishing...

We examine the sorting role of broad-based equity pay using detailed employee-level data. We propose trust in management as an important and beneficial characteristic over which equity pay sorts employees, as such pay typically leaves employees with concentrated positions in employer stock and...

We examine how government ownership affects the top management team's (TMT) pay dispersion and how such TMT pay dispersion affects subsequent firm performance. We test three competing views on the influences of government ownership, referred to as the agency view, the equity view, and the...

This paper uses variation in real estate prices to test whether CEOs are paid for luck or to respond to luck. We distinguish between pay for luck and pay for responding to luck by exploiting GAAP accounting rules. In the United States, real estate used in the firm's operations is not...