This paper investigates whether observed executive compensation contracts are designed to provide risk-taking incentives in addition to effort incentives. We develop a stylized principal-agent model that captures the interdependence between firm risk and managerial incentives. We calibrate the...

Incentive effects of performance-based compensation schemes for management may be weakened or biased by macroeconomic influences on remuneration. These influences can be seen as reflecting luck from the CEO’s perspective. In this chapter we present a model for how to avoid compensating CEO for...

Standard principal-agent theory predicts that large firms should not use employee stock options and other stock-based compensation to provide incentives to non-executive employees. Yet, business practitioners appear to believe that stock-based compensation improves incentives, and mounting...

An entrepreneur with information about firm quality seeks financing from an uninformed investor in order to pay a worker. I show that if the worker, too, knows the true quality of the firm, then certain long term wage agreements can credibly signal firm quality. Such wage agreements have a low...

The relationship between CEO pay and performance has been much analyzed in the management and economics literature. This study analyzes the structure of executive compensation in family and non-family firms. In line with predictions of agency theory, it is found that the share of base salary is...

This paper adds to the empirical evidence on the extent to which stock-based pay incentivizes and rewards European corporate executives. It shows that the actual realized gains (that is, take-home compensation) from stock-based pay of CEOs in European publicly-listed firms may be underestimated...

This paper investigates equity market reactions to the regulation of executive compensation. We exploit a natural experimental setting in Germany, where recent legislation introduces restrictions on the relative amount and on the components of board executive compensation packages, and invokes...

In the wake of the backdating scandal, many firms began awarding options at scheduled times each year. Scheduling option grants eliminates backdating, but creates other agency problems. CEOs that know the dates of upcoming scheduled option grants have an incentive to temporarily depress stock...

This paper examines whether CEO stock-based compensation has an effect on the market's ability to predict future earnings. When stock-based compensation motivates managers to share their private information with shareholders, it will expedite the pricing of future earnings in current stock...

Clawbacks are contractual provisions in executive compensation contracts that allow for an ex post recoupment of variable pay if certain triggering conditions are met. As a result of regulatory responses to financial crises and corporate scandals as well as of growing shareholder pressure to...