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Scholars have investigated the association between executives' incentives and earnings management. Most of the extant literature focuses on equity executives' incentives, while most of the earnings management literature focuses on accrual earnings management (AEM), not real earnings management (REM). This paper investigates the association between chief executive officers’ (CEOs) and chief financial officer (CFOs) cash compensation and REM and explores who has more influence on REM, the CEO or the CFO.

The authors use the data of all listed companies on the Shanghai and Shenzhen Stock Exchanges for the period from 2009 to 2017 and ordinary least squares regression as a baseline model and the Chow test to capture whether the CEO's or the CFO's cash compensation has more influence on REM. To address potential endogeneity issues, the authors use a firm-fixed effect technique and two-stage least squares regression.

The authors find that CEOs' and CFOs' cash compensation is significantly associated with REM, suggesting that paying non-equity compensation to the CEO and CFO is negatively associated with REM. The authors also find that the CFO's cash compensation has a more significant influence on REM than the CEO's cash compensation, suggesting that the CFO's accounting and financial knowledge strengthens his or her power on the quality of financial reporting.

The study contributes to the literature of agency and contract theories by using cash-based compensation to provide strong evidence that CEO's and CFO's compensation is associated with REM. It also contributes to the earnings management literature by examining the effect of CEOs' and CFOs' cash compensation on earnings management using proxies for REM-related activities. The study also contributes to the institutional theory by providing empirical evidence on the governance role of executives' cash compensation in deterring REM. Finally, it is the first to examine the relationship between CEO's and CFO's cash compensation and REM, and the first to explore who is more influential regarding REM in emerging markets, the CEO or the CFO.

As a response to the call for investigations of the role of non-equity-based compensation in earnings management and the call to consider non-developed institutional contexts in governance research, this study extends prior studies by providing novel evidence on the relationship between CEOs' and CFOs' non-equity compensation and REM in China's emerging market. The study documents that the CFO has a greater influence on REM than the CEO does.

The chapter investigates three channels through which private benefits are hypothesized to be extracted in dual class companies: excess executive compensation, excess capital expenditures and excess cash holdings.

With a propensity score matched sample of S&P 1500 dual class and single class companies with concentrated control, the chapter analyzes the relationship between the valuation discount of dual class companies and measures of excess executive compensation, excess capital expenditure and excess cash holdings.

Executives in dual class firms earn greater compensation relative to their counterparts in single class firms. This excess compensation is more pronounced when the executive is a family member. The value of dual class shares is discounted most when cash holdings and executive compensation of dual class are excessive. Excess compensation is highest for executives who are family members of dual class companies. The dual class discount is not related to excess capital expenditures.

The research shows that the discount in the value of dual class shares in relation to the value of closely controlled single class company shares is directly related to the channels through which controlling shareholder-managers can extract private benefits.

This article discusses the pay packages of executive officers at internetrelated business. Generally, the executives’ total compensation include salary, bonuses, commissions, stock options, and other financial compensation, such as forgiveness of loans, automobile expenses, etc. The 70 to 80 percent of the CEOs’ compensations are from gains of exercising stocks. In this tumbling market, shareholders are suffering the loss from the declining stock prices. However, many CEOs are still left with a mountain of wealth. Meanwhile, the board of directors also raises the stock options to retain their top talents even to those who are under‐performing. Besides CEOs’ compensations, we will also compare the CEO pay with non‐CEO pay packages. The CEOs compensations are still the highest. Furthermore, the average CEO made 42 times the average hourly worker’s pay in 1980, 85 times in 1990, and a staggering 531 times in 2000. Many shareholders are against these out of control pay packages. We conclude that it is time to review the process of determining the CEOs compensation, and that the significant presence of pay‐by‐performance should be taken into account in any examination of the practice and regulation of corporate governance.

This paper aims to investigate the economic determinants and the effects on firm value of the Chief Marketing Officer’s (CMO’s) equity incentives.

The empirical analysis uses 586 firm-year observations corresponding to 227 unique firms collected from Execucomp dataset over the period 2000-2009.

The paper documents that when a firm’s marketing intensity increases, the CMO’s equity incentives significantly increase; CMO’s equity incentives are positively related to shareholder value, and this positive relationship is incremental to that between the Chief Executive Officer’s (CEO)’s equity incentives and firm value; the positive impact of the CMO’s equity incentives on the firm value is partially mediated by marketing investments.

The paper helps understand under which circumstances firms provide the CMO with high-equity incentives and what the performance implications are of providing the CMO with long-term incentives.

Results indicate that companies should try to incent the CMO with equity-based incentives because the CMO can boost shareholder value on a way that is incremental to how the CEO does so. As a consequence, if the board of directors decides not to provide the CMO with sufficient equity incentives, it is likely that this decision will be suboptimal for shareholders.

This paper is the first to analyze the structure and effect on firm value of the CMO’s compensation in answer to calls for research on compensation of executives other than CEOs.

The purpose of this study is to conduct a comparative analysis of the economic determinants of the compensation for chief executive officers (CEOs) between the pre- and post-financial crisis periods. To conduct the comparative analysis, the authors consider five years before and five years after the financial crisis of 2008. The authors use the data from the US financial service institutions and run separate regressions for the pre- and post-crisis periods to check if there is any significant difference in the economic determinants of executive compensation before and after the financial crisis. The authors find that total compensation and its incentive components decreased significantly in the post-crisis period. In the pre-crisis period, total compensation was determined by stock performance, accounting profit, growth, and leverage, whereas in the post-crisis period stock returns and leverage are the major factors influencing total compensation. The authors also find that firms’ leverage negatively influences the sensitivity of the pay for performance, but the influence of leverage on pay for performance is weaker in the post-crisis period. Our research is significant in the context of the US economy, the regulatory reforms of financial institutions, and the perspectives of the executive compensations. This is the first study that compares the relationship between compensation and firm performance over the pre- and post-crisis periods. It is an explicit attempt to develop a theoretical understanding of the compensation/performance relationship for the financial industry, which is blamed for the financial crisis and is affected by the Dodd–Frank regulation after the crisis.

Incentive‐based executive compensation is regarded as a mechanism for alleviating agency problems between executives and shareholders. Seventy‐three New Zealand (NZ) listed companies are used to examine the relationship between executive incentive compensation schemes (ICS) and firm performance. The results suggest that neither compensation level nor adoption of an ICS are significantly related to returns to shareholders or ROA. However, there is a statistically significant relationship between Tobin's q and both CEO compensation and executive share ownership. Further, the evidence suggests the recent compensation disclosure requirements in NZ are not yet stringent enough to allow adequate analysis of the link between ICSs and corporate performance.

Given the serious question raised by the subprime of the 2008 global financial crisis over the rising practices of excessive rewarding of executives in the USA and European firms, the executive pay-performance nexus has emerged as a popular topic of debate in the contemporary corporate finance research. Conducted mostly on the Anglo-Saxon contexts, research outcomes have been inconclusive and dichotomous. Considering this backdrop, this study aims to investigate the endogenous relationship between executive compensation and risk taking in the context of the USA.

Using a large sample of non-financial firms from 2010 to 2020 based on panel data and two-stage least square regression. In this study, the riskier corporate decision is measured as book leverage and ratio of R&D expense to total assets. Chief executive officers’ (CEO) experience and age are used as instrumental variables, and these are expected to influence compensation incentives and, hence, affect firm riskiness indirectly. Firm size, return on assets and CEO turnover are reported to affect compensation and corporate decisions, therefore, included as control variables. Given that higher executive compensation is related to riskier corporate decision in firms, this study incorporates total wealth (i.e. accumulated equity related compensation) as an additional proxy of compensation, and this selection is justifiable by the perfect contracting notion of the agency theory.

The results of this study show a significant positive and increasing nexus among compensation and riskier corporate decisions. Besides, the compensation level proxied through the percentage of each form of compensation in total compensation is very important as greater equity and greater salary diminishes risk taking.

The outcomes of this study have useful implications for firm stakeholders and policymakers.

The level of pay measured by the percentage of each type of compensation in total compensation is of utmost importance as it can increase or decrease risk taking in corporate decisions.

The purpose of this study is to examine the impact of corporate governance (CG) on chief executive officer compensation (CEO COMP) and pay–performance relationship (PPR) in Indian listed firms.

A sample of 196 companies listed on the S&P BSE 500 (Standard and Poor's Bombay Stock Exchange 500) Index has been analyzed using the panel (random effects) regression technique over the period 2010–2019. In addition, the system GMM technique was used to deal with the endogeneity issue.

The study found that block ownership and ownership concentration negatively impact COMP measures and PPR. Board size also had a negative direct and moderating impact on CEO COMP; however, the linkages were generally insignificant, especially for total pay. Similarly, outsider blockholders were found to be playing an insignificant role. Further, board independence positively influences COMP levels and PPR, though the results were mixed with respect to significance. Finally, CEO duality positively and significantly influences CEO COMP and PPR. A comparison before and after the new Indian Companies Act 2013 also revealed similar results, particularly in the after period. It suggests that the new legislative initiative was not effective enough in improving the CG and, hence, the alignment of pay with performance.

This study investigates the direct and moderating impact of CG on CEO COMP in the context of emerging economy India. Further, it makes a comparison before and after the introduction of the new governance reform, that is, the Indian Companies Act, 2013. Moreover, providing support to the entrenchment effect, the study reveals that large shareholders expropriate minority shareholders’ wealth by not aligning CEO pay with performance, making agency problems graver in emerging economies like India.

Relates previous research on the importance of age in decision‐making to Fama and Jensen’s (1983) ideas on decision management, develops hypotheses on the age of managers and the use of stock‐based compensation in companies with long time horizons (i.e. growth companies) and tests them on 1979‐1987 data for a sample of US firms. Explains the methodology used and presents the results, which show that these firms tend to have younger subordinate executives (but not younger CEOs) and to use less stock‐based compensation the younger these executives are. Suggests this is because younger executives effectively extend the time horizon of older CEOs, thus reducing the need to do this through the compensation package.

This study aims to examine the effect of chief executive officer (CEO) integrity on organizations’ strategic orientation. The authors propose that CEOs who have high degrees of integrity tend to negatively influence each of the three core dimensions of entrepreneurial orientation (EO) – innovativeness, proactiveness and risk-taking. They also argue that this impact of CEO integrity is likely to be stronger for overconfident CEOs and the CEOs with high power. Furthermore, this negative relationship is expected to attenuate when the firm has high customer orientation and when the CEO is compensated with high equity-pay ratio.

Seemingly unrelated regression analysis was conducted on panel of 741 firm-year observations of 213 firms across 2014–2017. CEO integrity and each of the three dimensions of EO were measured using content analysis of CEOs’ letters to shareholders. CEO power was measured using CEO stock ownership and CEO duality. CEO overconfidence was measured by using options-based measure. Customer orientation was measured by using content analyses on annual reports. CEO equity-pay based ratio was measured as sum of value of stock and option awards divided by CEO’s total compensation. This study considered alternative measures and performed treatments for potential endogeneity, sample selection bias and outliers.

The research findings conclude that organizations with CEOs who have high integrity tend to have lower levels of all sub-dimensions of EO – innovativeness, proactiveness and risk-taking. Further, the results indicate that the negative effect that CEO integrity has, affects one of its dimensions – proactiveness, such that the relation is strengthened when the CEO has high power and is highly overconfident. This negative effect weakens when the CEO is compensated with high equity-pay ratio. The results also indicate that the negative effect of integrity and innovativeness and risk-taking weakens when the firm has high customer orientation.

The research contributes to upper echelon theory literature by adding to the discussion of how business executives’ psychological traits map onto firm behavior. This research also finds common ground between literature on innovation and upper echelons, contributing to awareness about the drivers of firms’ EO.

This research addresses the question of firm relation to EO by highlighting that firms’ EO is also shaped by the psychological traits of their CEOs and the interaction of these traits with CEOs’ cognitive biases. Thus, board members of firms led by CEOs with high integrity can limit CEO’s risk-averse behavior by focusing on their training and by creating incentive systems. It is also advantageous for CEOs to understand that integrity is a double-edged sword, thus leveraging the strengths of their integrity, while simultaneously using tools such as training to diminish its negative aspects.

This paper fulfils a twofold identified need to: study the antecedents of each of the three dimensions of EO, not limited to corporate governance; and unearth the counterproductive behaviors associated with bright traits that make up their dark side