In the wake of the backdating scandal, many firms began awarding options at scheduled times each year. Scheduling option grants eliminates backdating, but creates other agency problems. CEOs that know the dates of upcoming scheduled option grants have an incentive to temporarily depress stock...

A large body of literature suggests that CEOs have misaligned incentives to undertake acquisitions in an attempt to increase their pay. This paper shows that the likelihood of post-acquisition CEO turnover can act as a constraint on such incentives. The acquisition premium in pay decreases by...

This study investigates dynamics and convergence in CEO pay in Australia’s largest corporations over an 18 year period. Utilizing dynamic panel estimators, we find that CEO pay is driven by dynamic adjustments, firm size, board size, CEO tenure and firm performance. The largest pay-performance...

Convergence in CEO pay occurs when pay differentials narrow over time. We analyze and compare differences in the rate of convergence in CEO pay of Australian listed firms with high shareholding concentration (HSC) and without, for the period 1992 to 2009. We find zero and negative...

It is established that the standard principal-agent model cannot explain the structure of commonly used CEO compensation contracts if CRRA preferences are postulated. However, we demonstrate that this model has potentially a high explanatory power with preferences with decreasing relative risk...

It is established that the standard principal-agent model cannot explain the structure of commonly used CEO compensation contracts if preferences with constant relative risk aversion are postulated. However, we demonstrate that this model has potentially a high explanatory power with preferences...

This paper estimates the effects of Say-on-Pay (SoP); a policy that increases shareholder "voice" by providing shareholders with a regular vote on executive pay. We apply a regression discontinuity design to the votes on shareholder-sponsored SoP proposals. Adopting SoP leads to large increases...

We analyze the consequences of bonus taxes, limited deductibility of bonuses from company pro ts and a corporate income tax (CIT) in a principal-agent model and explore how these tax instruments affect managerial incentives and how they change the design of incentive contracts used in...

In this paper, we test empirically whether there is a relationship between corporate income taxes and CEO bonus payments. Using Compustat and ExecuComp data from 1992 to 2010, we find mixed results. Looking at the whole sample, the average bonus contract rewards tax savings excessively in...

Using a simple symmetric principal-agent model of two banks, this paper studies the effects of both bailouts and bonus taxes on risk taking and managerial compensation. In contrast to existing literature, we assume financial institutions to be systemic only on a collective basis, implying...