Executive Compensation as an Agency Problem

Executive Compensation as an Agency Problem PDF Author: Lucian A. Bebchuk
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Agency (Law)
Languages : en
Pages : 44

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Book Description
This paper provides an overview of the main theoretical elements and empirical underpinnings of a managerial power' approach to executive compensation. Under this approach, the design of executive compensation is viewed not only as an instrument for addressing the agency problem between managers and shareholders but also as part of the agency problem itself. Boards of publicly traded companies with dispersed ownership, we argue, cannot be expected to bargain at arm's length with managers. As a result, managers wield substantial influence over their own pay arrangements, and they have an interest in reducing the saliency of the amount of their pay and the extent to which that pay is de-coupled from managers' performance. We show that the managerial power approach can explain many features of the executive compensation landscape, including ones that many researchers have long viewed as puzzling. Among other things, we discuss option plan design, stealth compensation, executive loans, payments to departing executives, retirement benefits, the use of compensation consultants, and the observed relationship between CEO power and pay. We also explain how managerial influence might lead to substantially inefficient arrangements that produce weak or even perverse incentives.

Executive Compensation as an Agency Problem

Executive Compensation as an Agency Problem PDF Author: Lucian A. Bebchuk
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Agency (Law)
Languages : en
Pages : 44

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Book Description
This paper provides an overview of the main theoretical elements and empirical underpinnings of a managerial power' approach to executive compensation. Under this approach, the design of executive compensation is viewed not only as an instrument for addressing the agency problem between managers and shareholders but also as part of the agency problem itself. Boards of publicly traded companies with dispersed ownership, we argue, cannot be expected to bargain at arm's length with managers. As a result, managers wield substantial influence over their own pay arrangements, and they have an interest in reducing the saliency of the amount of their pay and the extent to which that pay is de-coupled from managers' performance. We show that the managerial power approach can explain many features of the executive compensation landscape, including ones that many researchers have long viewed as puzzling. Among other things, we discuss option plan design, stealth compensation, executive loans, payments to departing executives, retirement benefits, the use of compensation consultants, and the observed relationship between CEO power and pay. We also explain how managerial influence might lead to substantially inefficient arrangements that produce weak or even perverse incentives.

Executive Compensation as an Agency Problem

Executive Compensation as an Agency Problem PDF Author: Lucian A. Bebchuk
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 29

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Book Description
This paper provides an overview of the main theoretical elements and empirical underpinnings of a managerial power approach to executive compensation. Under this approach, the design of executive compensation is viewed not only as an instrument for addressing the agency problem between managers and shareholders but also as part of the agency problem itself. Boards of publicly traded companies with dispersed ownership, we argue, cannot be expected to bargain at arm's length with managers. As a result, managers wield substantial influence over their own pay arrangements, and they have an interest in reducing the saliency of the amount of their pay and the extent to which that pay is de-coupled from managers' performance. We show that the managerial power approach can explain many features of the executive compensation landscape, including ones that many researchers have long viewed as puzzling. Among other things, we discuss option plan design, stealth compensation, executive loans, payments to departing executives, retirement benefits, the use of compensation consultants, and the observed relationship between CEO power and pay. We also explain how managerial influence might lead to substantially inefficient arrangements that produce weak or even perverse incentives.

Agency Theory and Executive Pay

Agency Theory and Executive Pay PDF Author: Alexander Pepper
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319999699
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 133

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Book Description
This new book examines the relationship between agency theory and executive pay. It argues that while Jensen and Meckling (1976) were right in their analysis of the agency problem in public corporations they were wrong about the proposed solutions. Drawing on ideas from economics, psychology, sociology and the philosophy of science, the author explains how standard agency theory has contributed to the problem of executive pay rather than solved it. The book explores why companies should be regarded as real entities not legal fictions, how executive pay in public corporations can be conceptualised as a collective action problem and how behavioral science can help in the design of optimal incentive arrangements. An insightful and revolutionary read for those researching corporate governance, HRM and organisation theory, this useful book offers potential solutions to some of the problems with executive pay and the standard model of agency.

Pay Without Performance

Pay Without Performance PDF Author: Lucian A. Bebchuk
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674020634
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 308

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Book Description
The company is under-performing, its share price is trailing, and the CEO gets...a multi-million-dollar raise. This story is familiar, for good reason: as this book clearly demonstrates, structural flaws in corporate governance have produced widespread distortions in executive pay. Pay without Performance presents a disconcerting portrait of managers' influence over their own pay--and of a governance system that must fundamentally change if firms are to be managed in the interest of shareholders. Lucian Bebchuk and Jesse Fried demonstrate that corporate boards have persistently failed to negotiate at arm's length with the executives they are meant to oversee. They give a richly detailed account of how pay practices--from option plans to retirement benefits--have decoupled compensation from performance and have camouflaged both the amount and performance-insensitivity of pay. Executives' unwonted influence over their compensation has hurt shareholders by increasing pay levels and, even more importantly, by leading to practices that dilute and distort managers' incentives. This book identifies basic problems with our current reliance on boards as guardians of shareholder interests. And the solution, the authors argue, is not merely to make these boards more independent of executives as recent reforms attempt to do. Rather, boards should also be made more dependent on shareholders by eliminating the arrangements that entrench directors and insulate them from their shareholders. A powerful critique of executive compensation and corporate governance, Pay without Performance points the way to restoring corporate integrity and improving corporate performance.

An Introduction to Executive Compensation

An Introduction to Executive Compensation PDF Author: Steven Balsam
Publisher: Academic Press
ISBN: 9780120771264
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 410

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Book Description
General readers have no idea why people should care about what executives are paid and why they are paid the way they are. That's the reason that The Wall Street Journal, Fortune, Forbes, and other popular and practitioner publications have regular coverage on them. This book not only proposes a reason - executives need incentives in order to maximize firm value (economists call this agency theory) - it also describes the nature and design of executive compensation practices. Those incentives can take the form of benefits (salary, stock options), or prerquisites (reflecting the status of the executive within the organizational culture.

Pay Equity in CEO Compensation and Agency Problems

Pay Equity in CEO Compensation and Agency Problems PDF Author: Jeongil Seo
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 180

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Book Description


Executive Compensation

Executive Compensation PDF Author: Raghavendra Rau
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781680832976
Category : Electronic books
Languages : en
Pages : 181

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Book Description
The optimal design of executive compensation is one of the primary issues in the area of corporate governance and has been investigated in considerable detail in the academic literature over the past three decades. The underlying assumption behind the design of optimal compensation schemes is that the executives of the firm have more information on the firm's projects and cash flows than the shareholders. In the presence of symmetric information, since the shareholders can completely distinguish the executive's effort from bad luck or other extraneous factors, there is little need to motivate the executive beyond a flat salary. In the presence of asymmetric information, the shareholder faces two problems: One, to select the right type of agent (the adverse selection problem) and two, to motivate the agent to work hard once selected (the moral hazard problem). All executive compensation schemes represent trade-offs between these two agency problems. In this survey, in the first section, I start by discussing the theory of executive compensation. Why do firms pay executives? I distinguish two major approaches. The first arises from the theory of optimal compensation contracting and focuses on the composition of pay. It argues that the composition of pay is set to attract good executives (to solve the adverse selection problem) and motivate them to work hard (the moral hazard problem). The second approach focuses on the level of pay. It argues that managers have a considerable degree of power in setting their own wages, and in particular, use their power to extract excessive pay or rents from the shareholders. In the second section, I discuss the evidence on both the composition and level of pay and how it has changed over time, treating each component pay separately. I also discuss the composition of pay in countries around the world and in specific industries. In the third section, I describe who decides pay composition and levels. Finally, in the fourth section, I conclude by examining how the structure of pay has real consequences for firms.

The Handbook of the Economics of Corporate Governance

The Handbook of the Economics of Corporate Governance PDF Author: Benjamin Hermalin
Publisher: Elsevier
ISBN: 0444635408
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 762

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Book Description
The Handbook of the Economics of Corporate Governance, Volume One, covers all issues important to economists. It is organized around fundamental principles, whereas multidisciplinary books on corporate governance often concentrate on specific topics. Specific topics include Relevant Theory and Methods, Organizational Economic Models as They Pertain to Governance, Managerial Career Concerns, Assessment & Monitoring, and Signal Jamming, The Institutions and Practice of Governance, The Law and Economics of Governance, Takeovers, Buyouts, and the Market for Control, Executive Compensation, Dominant Shareholders, and more. Providing excellent overviews and summaries of extant research, this book presents advanced students in graduate programs with details and perspectives that other books overlook. Concentrates on underlying principles that change little, even as the empirical literature moves on Helps readers see corporate governance systems as interrelated or even intertwined external (country-level) and internal (firm-level) forces Reviews the methodological tools of the field (theory and empirical), the most relevant models, and the field’s substantive findings, all of which help point the way forward

Research Handbook on Executive Pay

Research Handbook on Executive Pay PDF Author: John S. Beasley
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
ISBN: 1781005109
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 553

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Book Description
Research on executive compensation has exploded in recent years, and this volume of specially commissioned essays brings the reader up-to-date on all of the latest developments in the field. Leading corporate governance scholars from a range of countries set out their views on four main areas of executive compensation: the history and theory of executive compensation, the structure of executive pay, corporate governance and executive compensation, and international perspectives on executive pay. The authors analyze the two dominant theoretical approaches – managerial power theory and optimal contracting theory – and examine their impact on executive pay levels and the practices of concentrated and dispersed share ownership in corporations. The effectiveness of government regulation of executive pay and international executive pay practices in Australia, the US, Europe, China, India and Japan are also discussed. A timely study of a controversial topic, the Handbook will be an essential resource for students, scholars and practitioners of law, finance, business and accounting.

Solutions to the Principal-agent Problem in the Firm

Solutions to the Principal-agent Problem in the Firm PDF Author: Catherine V. Brown
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Compensation management
Languages : en
Pages : 124

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Book Description
Does increasing or restructuring executive compensation improve firm performance? Is there an optimal composition for the firm's supervisory board of directors? How effective are management incentives and regulation of management in alleviating firm agency problems? While previous work examines the relationships of executive compensation and board composition to firm performance in isolation, I explore the effects of the agency alleviating mechanisms in a simultaneous equations framework. I find evidence that the variables are jointly determined. If these findings indicate the approximate nature of the system, then results estimating these relationships in isolation are potentially spurious, and corporate governance recommendations based upon them may be ineffectual.