In the wake of the recent financial crisis, US executive compensation has, once again, come under fire from regulators, politicians, the financial press, the general public, and some academics. Although the critiques are varied, many identify the level of pay and performance-based incentives as...

In the wake of the recent financial crisis, proposals have been put forward to resolve "problems" with executive pay and incentives. Although these proposals discuss ways firms or regulators might get executives to hold greater incentives, they fail to identify how one should determine whether...

Given CEOs' substantial equity portfolios, much recent literature on CEO incentives regards cash-based bonus plans as largely irrelevant, begging the question of why nearly all CEO compensation plans include such bonuses. We develop a new measure of bonus plan incentives, and document that...