Principal-agent theory suggests that a manager should be paid relative to a benchmark that captures the effect of market or sector performance on the firm's own performance. Recently, it has been argued that we do not observe such indexation in the data because executives can set pay in their...

We study the effects of stock price informativeness (SPI) on the complexity of executive compensation. Using textual analysis of SEC proxy statements to construct measures of compensation complexity, we find informative stock prices reduce pay complexity. Using mutual fund redemption as an...

We study the motive of using equity-based pay in executive compensation: the risk-sharing motive versus the performance-measuring motive. The empirical design goes through the relationship between equity-based pay and stock price informativeness (SPI). We find equity-based pay decreases in SPI,...

We investigate the role of Relative Performance Evaluation (RPE) theory in CEO pay and turnover using a product similarity-based definition of peers (Hoberg and Phillips 2016). RPE predicts that firms filter out common shocks (i.e., those affecting the firm and its peers) while evaluating CEO...