Since August 2009, German legislation allows for voluntary Say on Pay Votes (SoPV) during Annual General Meetings (AGMs). We examine 1,169 AGMs of all German listed firms with more than 10,000 agenda items over the period 2010-2013 to identify (1) determinants and approval rates of voluntary...

We examine the consequences of the highly anticipated and controversial Section 953(b) of the Dodd-Frank Act, which mandates companies to disclose the CEO-to-median employee pay ratio starting from 2018. We address endogeneity concerns by using a regression discontinuity design around the public...

We examine the impact of Australia's Remuneration Amendment Act 2011 on CEO compensation and its spill-over effect on cash holdings to better understand how the new legislation affects the principal–agent relationship. Using a sample of ASX top 300 firms from 2004 to 2015, we find that the Act...

We examine whether the information content of the earnings report, as captured by the earnings response coefficient (ERC), increases when investors' uncertainty about the manager's reporting objectives decreases, as predicted in Fischer and Verrecchia (2000). We use the 2006 mandatory...

Bank executives' compensation has been widely identified as a culprit in the Global Financial Crisis, and reform of banker pay is high on the public policy agenda. While Congress targeted its reforms primarily at bankers' equity-based pay incentives, empirical research fails to show any...

In Closer Look, we highlight significant “holes” in our knowledge of corporate governance. These are central issues where insufficient or inadequate study has left us unable to answer basic questions, and where key assumptions relied upon by experts have not been verified or validated. While...

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...