Soaring executive compensation during the past two decades has sparked an interest in CEO and other top management pay. We add a long-term perspective to this trend by constructing the first panel dataset to follow the compensation of top executives in large firms from 1936 to the present. The average real value of total compensation experienced three distinct phases: a sharp decline during Wor...

P ho to b y C O LI N A N D E R S O N /T he I m ag e B an k M any executives of medical technology companies count on incentive compensation plans to align their sales representatives’ goals with the goals of the company, but this oftentimes isn’t the result. Some very common types of incentive plans, when coupled with poorly balanced sales territories, can actually hinder a medtech company’s ab...

This paper provides a preliminary report of a study of the thinking styles of mid-level and senior information technology executives from the United States. Contrary to popular belief, a significantly smaller proportion of these executives prefer analytic thinking, and a significantly larger proportion prefer holistic thinking, than would be expected. This reality, coupled with a common (mis)pe...

We develop a framework for analyzing an executives own-company stockholding and work effort preferences. The executive, characterized by risk aversion and work effectiveness parameters, invests his personal wealth without constraint in the financial market, including the stock of his own company whose value he can directly influence with work effort. The executives utilitymaximizing personal in...

Executive Compensation, Firm Performance, and Corporate Governance in China: Evidence from Firms Listed in the Shanghai and Shenzhen Stock Exchanges This paper provides evidence on how executive compensation relates to firm performance in listed firms in China. Using comprehensive financial and accounting data on China’s listed firms from 1998 to 2002, augmented by unique data on executive comp...

There has been little research examining executives who change jobs by specifically following these individuals both before and after their employer changes. By incorporating research on the boundaryless career [Arthur, M. B., & Rousseau, D. M. (Eds.). (1996). The boundaryless career: A new employment principle for a new organizational era. New York: Oxford University Press; Sullivan, S. E., & ...

This paper measures the responsiveness of taxable income to changes in the marginal tax rate using panel data on executive compensation since 1992. It exploits variation from four tax acts: the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1993, the Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001, the Jobs and Growth Reconciliation Act of 2003, and the American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012. Sto...

We study how and when option grants can be the optimal compensation to screen low-ability executives. In a dynamic setting, we consider the problem of a risk-neutral firm that tries to hire a risk-averse executive whose actions can affect the expected return and volatility of the stock price. Even if the optimal compensation for all types of executives is stock under complete information, it mi...

Abstract In this study, we explore how early career advancement affects the gender pay gap among top executives and argue that an employee's age at attainment of executive position serves as a signal helps reduce biases toward women, thereby lowering differentials. We analyze data 803 from public high-technology manufacturing firms in United States by collecting information ExecuComp , Marquis ...