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...

A consensus is developing that executive compensation in the U.S. is inadequately linked to long-term company performance, resulting in reckless, short-term decision making. Congress, the Obama administration, and academic commentators have recently embraced dramatic restrictions on the form and...

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...

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...

Lawyers now serve as executives in 44% of corporations. Although endowed with gatekeeping responsibilities, executive lawyers face increasing pressure to use time on strategic efforts. In a lawyer fixed effects model, we quantify that lawyers are half as important as CEOs in explaining variances...

Lawyers now serve as executives in 44% of corporations. Although endowed with gatekeeping responsibilities, executive lawyers face increasing pressure to use time on strategic efforts. In a lawyer fixed effects model, we quantify that lawyers are half as important as CEOs in explaining variances...

I investigate the determinants and consequences of granting equity to the target's CEO during deal negotiations. These negotiation grants likely reflect information about the acquisition, benefit from the deal premium, and provide more timely bargaining incentives. I find that CEOs are more...

Golden parachutes (“GPs”) are now standard contract provisions for public company CEOs. While they have become ubiquitous, they have also been severely criticized for harming shareholder value. As a result, GPs have been subjected to intense shareholder activism and uniquely penalized under...

This paper presents a model of a firm that backdates the granting of executive stock options in order to maximize actual compensation for a given level of reported compensation. The model is used to estimate the magnitude of the difference between the actual and reported values of option grants....

This paper, which was first presented as a conference paper at the Annual 2009 Supreme Court of New South Wales Conference in June 2009, considers the impact of the global financial crisis on the regulation of executive pay in a range of common law jurisdictions, including the United States, the...