We provide fresh evidence regarding the relation between compensation consultants and CEO pay. First, firms that employ consultants have higher-paid CEOs—this result is robust to firm fixed-effects and matching on economic and governance variables. Second, while this relation is partly due to...

We use a proprietary data set with detailed executive compensation information to examine the relationship between the incentives of the tax director and GAAP and cash effective tax rates, the book-tax gap, and measures of tax aggressiveness. We find that the incentive compensation of the tax...

Section 304 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (hereafter, SOX), commonly known as the clawback provision, entitles the SEC to sue the CEO and CFO in an attempt to recover their incentive compensation based on misstated financial reports. While a stream of literature investigates the effects of voluntary...

This paper examines whether the risk-taking incentives induced by performance-based vesting (p-v) compensation influence bank loan contracting and credit ratings. Consistent with our risk-shifting hypothesis, we find that the p-v based compensation, as measured by the proportion of grant date...

While numerous studies have examined the impact that powerful CEOs have on their compensation and overall firm decisions, relatively little is known about how powerful CFOs influence their compensation and important firm financial reporting and operational outcomes. This is somewhat surprising...