We examine the efficacy of proxy voting to limit inflated CEO pay. We find that the percentage of dissenting votes that go against director-sponsored compensation proposals increases following a staggered rejection of the Inevitable Disclosure Doctrine (RIDD), which increases CEOs’ job...

We examine factors influencing firms' strategic disclosure of executive pay in Korea. Because the disclosure rules in Korea do not mandate but only recommend that firms distinguish between inside executive directors and outside directors when reporting the average pay of directors, this...

Using the mandatory adoption of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS), we examine whether an exogenously imposed disclosure reform that increases the amount of information affects the level of executive compensation. Extant theories suggest that disclosure reforms could either raise...

In March 2010, Japanese regulators implemented the country's first legislation concerning the disclosure of director compensation for named individuals. Using the first publicly available data for Japanese executives, we document direct evidence on the level, structure, and mechanisms of CEO...

There are several measures of equity compensation that may provide shareholders with distinct and useful information for evaluating CEO pay. We examine whether shareholders consider additional disclosures of equity compensation measures beyond the grant date fair value when participating in...

Beginning in 2018, U.S. public firms were required to report the ratio of the chief executive officer's (CEO) compensation to their median employee's compensation in the annual proxy statement. We find that this pay ratio disclosure leads to declines in both total compensation and...

We examine the influence of proxy advisors on firms’ shareholder engagement behavior. Our analyses exploit a quasi-natural experiment using Say-On-Pay voting outcomes near a threshold that triggers a review of engagement activities by Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS). Firms receiving...

We examine the real effects of disclosing information about the pay gap between the CEO and employees. Firms reporting higher pay ratios tend to include discretionary narrative portraying their employee relations or compensation practices in a positive light. Reporting higher ratios is...

Based on the recent SEC-mandated disclosures of CEO-worker pay ratios, we find that firms significantly decrease (increase) their CEO-worker pay ratios when their prior pay ratios are high (low) relative to peers. More importantly, the decrease in pay ratio among high pay ratio firms is...

We examine the relation between managerial incentives and disclosure. Specifically, we examine how contracts that explicitly evaluate managers relative to peer performance are associated with: (1) the transparency of mandatory disclosure; (2) the provision of voluntary disclosure; and (3) the...