CEOs of public (listed) firms earn more than their counterparts in similar private (unlisted) firms. This can either be because rent extraction is easier in public firms than in private firms, or because managing a public firm involves more legal and institutional responsibilities than managing...

This paper examines the governance role of hedge fund activists by analyzing the impact of these activists on CEO turnover, CEO pay, and CEO pay-performance link in targeted companies. Using the difference-in-difference approach, we first find significantly higher CEO turnover following hedge...

Using a sample of more than 1,500 US public firms in the period 1998-2016, we examine how firms endogenously adjust CEO compensation contracts when they become financially distressed. The link between compensation and equity-based measures of firm performance is positive and strong prior to...

Using the pay restriction imposed on CEOs of centrally administered state-owned enterprises (CSOEs) in China in 2009, we study the effects of limiting CEO pay. Compared with CEOs of firms not subject to the restriction, the CEOs of CSOEs experienced a significant pay cut. In response to the pay...

CEOs of S&P 500 firms that report high non-GAAP earnings relative to GAAP earnings receive more than $600 thousand in unexplained pay. The abnormally high pay appears even after controlling for the level of non-GAAP earnings and despite relatively weak GAAP performance and low returns....

The large compensation received by bank executives is among the many factors blamed for the risk-taking that led to the 2008-2009 financial crisis. We test whether and how pay disparities between CEO and non-CEO executives—the so-called CEO pay gap—influenced risk taking at publicly traded...

Beginning in 2018, U.S. public firms were required to report the ratio of the chief executive officer's (CEO) compensation to their median employee's compensation in the annual proxy statement. We find that this pay ratio disclosure leads to declines in both total compensation and...

We develop a structural industry equilibrium model to show how competitive CEO-firm matching and product markets jointly determine firm value and CEO pay. We analytically derive testable implications for the effects of product market characteristics on firm size, CEO pay, and CEO impact on firm...