Performance-based regulation is widely heralded as a superior approach to regulation. Rather than specifying the actions regulated entities must take, performance-based regulation instead requires the attainment of outcomes and gives flexibility in how to meet them. Despite nearly universal...

For the past 30 years, the conventional wisdom has been that executive compensation packages should include very large proportions of incentive pay. This incentive pay orthodoxy has become so firmly entrenched that the current debates about executive compensation simply take it as a given. We...

I argue that executive equity pay in U.S. public firms is undesirable and should be replaced with cash awards for attaining long-term performance criteria.Paying top executives in equity (stock and stock options) is the most significant reform of executive compensation in our generation,...

Executive equity compensation in the U.S. is evolving. At the turn of the millennium, stock options dominated the equity pay landscape, accounting for over half of the aggregate ex ante value of senior executive pay at large public companies, while restricted stock and similar compensation...

According to statistics, CEO-to-worker compensation ratio for large publicly traded firms in the U.S. has surged almost fifteen times since the 1960's. There is also a significant difference between CEO compensation and that of the average earner in the top 0.1 percent category (of around...

Previous literature shows that securities litigation is positively impacted by management compensation with a focus on the delta, but not the vega, component of compensation. We argue that the vega, rather than the delta, component of management compensation should be associated with litigation...

This paper examines the use of key employee retention and incentive plans (KERPs) in bankrupt firms. We find that firms in Chapter 11 are more likely to offer KERPs when firms are located in thicker employment markets, when creditors have strong control, and when bankrupt firms have complex...

In this article, we analyze whether the manipulation of stock options still continues to this day. Our evidence shows that executives continue to employ a variety of manipulative devices to increase their compensation, including backdating, bullet-dodging, and spring- loading. Overall, we find...

Over the past four decades, Congress has repeatedly used tax policy to address executive-compensation practices, most notably through golden-parachute penalty taxes (enacted in 1984), a $1 million cap on compensation deductions (enacted in 1993 and expanded in 2017), and penalty taxes on...