[This article is a revised and condensed version of Jesse Fried and Nitzan Shilon, Excess-Pay Clawbacks, available at http://ssrn.com/abstract=1798185]The Dodd-Frank Act requires firms to adopt clawback policies for recovering certain types of excess pay — overpayments resulting from errors in...

We explain why firms should have a policy requiring directors to recover “excess pay” – payouts to executives resulting from an error in compensation metrics (such as inflated earnings). We then analyze the clawback policies voluntarily adopted by S&P 500 firms as of 2010 and find that...