Using a large sample of firms from 38 countries over the 2001-2012 period, we find evidence that following say on pay (SoP) laws, CEO pay growth rates decline and the sensitivity of CEO pay to firm performance improves. These changes are mostly concentrated on firms with high excess pay and...

Using a sample of about 90,000 observations from 38 countries over the 2001-2012 period, we provide three novel findings regarding say on pay (SoP) laws. First, we find robust evidence that SoP laws reduce CEO pay growth rates at firms. Second, such laws decrease the portion of total top...

We investigate the impact of workers' exposure to unemployment risk on CEO incentive compensation. Exploiting state-level changes in unemployment benefits as a source of variation in workers' unemployment costs, we find that after unemployment insurance benefits become more generous boards...

This paper examines the use of ESG performance metrics in executive compensation contracts. We first document that a growing fraction of publicly traded companies around the world now incorporate ESG metrics in the compensation schemes of their top executives. Our analysis links the reliance on...