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Economic policy uncertainty (EPU) has huge impact and harm on real economy, so the economic logic and other economic effects behind this must be further studied. By constructing the “China Economic Policy Uncertainty Index” to capture the degree of EPU faced by Chinese companies, the authors empirically test whether and how EPU affects the level of executives' perquisite consumption.

This study investigates the relationship between EPU and executive perquisite consumption based on a sample of 3,185 publicly listed firms in China. To examine the relationship between EPU and executives' perquisite consumption, a mixed least squares method was used for regression. To alleviate the problem of missing variables that do not change over time and control the influence of unobservable individual heterogeneity at the firm level, the firm fixed effects model is used for regression.

The study finds that EPU is positively associated with executive perquisite consumption. This positive association is stronger for firms with smaller size, lower management shareholding and higher levels of separation of ownership and control. Effective external governance (i.e., analyst coverage, media coverage, auditor and market competition) can mitigate the relationship between EPU and executive perquisite consumption. Further analysis reveals that EPU increases executive perquisite consumption by holding more cash and decreasing firm risk taking. EPU hurts market value of firms by boosting executive perquisite consumption and tunneling.

In an environment with high EPU, the board of directors should reduce managers' compensation performance sensitivity to ease the agency conflict caused by uncertainty. Firms should improve their governance mechanisms and standard and pay attention to their environmental changes. Policymakers should pay attention to maintaining the continuity and predictability of policies, stabilizing the economic policy expectations of market entities and avoiding frequent changes in policies that can harm economic and firm value. The regulatory authorities should actively guide listed companies to increase active information disclosure during periods of high policy uncertainty.

This study contributes to the research on corporate governance by showing how EPU influences executives' behaviors. The authors advance relative studies by showing that this uncertainty embedded in a firm's external environments influences executive perquisite consumption. This study also contributes to the literature on how internal and external governances influence corporate behavior during uncertainty. These findings extend this line of research by suggesting that effective external governance is an attribute that can alleviate the effect of uncertainty on managers' opportunistic behaviors.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relation between executive perquisite consumption and indicators of corporate governance after the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) expanded the disclosure requirements related to perquisites.

This study uses ordinary least squares and Tobit regressions to examine the dollar value of perquisites consumed, the number of perquisites consumed and the types of perquisites consumed.

The analysis shows that firms with weak corporate governance are more likely to award perquisites to executives. Firms characterized as being more prone to the presence of agency problems are associated with greater levels of perquisite consumption. Finally, there is evidence that not all perquisite consumptions can be attributed to an agency problem. Efficiently operating firms are associated with greater levels of perquisite consumption as are larger firms.

The authors examine firms in the period immediately after the SEC initiated the expanded disclosures. This may limit the generalizability of the results to other exchange-listed firms that changed their perquisite policy as a result of the rule change.

The paper extends the literature on corporate governance and mandatory corporate disclosure by investigating the association between corporate governance characteristics and perquisite consumption. This paper examines this relation immediately after the SEC expanded the disclosures surrounding perquisites to provide the public with more transparent disclosures.

Excessive borrowing significantly contributes to pushing businesses towards default and their transition into zombie enterprises. Despite government efforts to implement deleveraging policies and guide bank credit flows, it’s essential to delve into the internal dynamics that steer the borrowing behavior of these zombie enterprises at a micro level. To gain a comprehensive understanding of the issue, this study focuses on examining the incentives that drive corporate executives of zombie enterprises to consistently engage in large-scale borrowing from banks.

In this study, panel data analysis is utilized, incorporating firm-, industry- and year-fixed effects. Drawing from data pertaining to listed companies in China spanning from 2007 to 2020, we employ a one-by-one identification method to pinpoint zombie enterprises. Ultimately, a total of 2,533 samples of zombie enterprises were obtained.

The results indicate that as bank loans to zombie enterprises increase, executive monetary compensation decreases, while on-the-job consumption by executives increases, and they are less likely to be forced into rotation. Mechanism testing reveals that corporate performance partially mediates the relationship between bank loans and executive monetary compensation, but this mediation is ineffective for on-the-job consumption and job rotation. Further investigation suggests that the property rights nature of central enterprises and modified audit opinions can exacerbate the adverse impact of bank loans on the monetary compensation of zombie corporate executives, without significantly affecting on-the-job consumption or job rotation. Conversely, executive power does not enhance the positive effects of bank loans on monetary compensation or on-the-job consumption, but it diminishes the negative impact of bank loans on the forced rotation of zombie executives.

These results indicate that while bank loans may have a negative impact on corporate value, they function as safeguards for the positions and interests of executives. As a result, bank loans serve as incentives for executives of zombie enterprises.

This study holds theoretical significance as it explores the motivations behind non-performing loans in high-borrowing enterprises, sheds light on corporate governance challenges encountered by zombie enterprises and provides policy insights aimed at addressing the underlying causes of persistent non-performing loans in high-borrowing enterprises, including zombie enterprises.

This paper aims to examine the design of optimal incentives for a firm’s tax department in the presence of information asymmetry.

This paper provides a theoretical model to examine the design of optimal incentives. The focus is on a situation in which a risk-averse tax department has private information about its efficiency type or effort to be exerted before the firm sets the incentive schemes.

This paper shows that a tax department’s risk aversion leads to a decline in the fraction of the cost borne by the tax department. It also shows that the optimal contract schemes should be designed to filter out as much uncontrollable risk as possible by using third-party information relevant to a tax department’s realized cost.

It contributes to a better understanding of the impact of corporate incentive plans on firms’ tax practices. This study, by designing a theoretical model, helps explain why there exist differences in tax planning across firms based on the finding that incentives for tax planning activities differ across firms.

This paper is the first study that considers the situation in which tax managers’ risk-averse and types, as well as relevant information collected by the firms, can be used to set up incentive schemes and investigates whether and how the incentive schemes will be affected when firms improve their prior information by acquiring relevant information before the tax department acts.

This study aims to examine the effects of dialect connectedness between the chairman and the chief executive officer (CEO) (DCCC) on the tunneling activities of controlling shareholders.

This study uses abnormal related-party transactions (ARPT) as a proxy for tunneling activities and traces dialects of chairmen and CEOs based on the respective birthplace information. Baseline results are examined using a fixed-effects model. The results remain robust when using the instrumental variable approach, propensity score matching (PSM) technique, changing the measurement of tunneling and Heckman two-step selection model.

The results show that DCCC reduces tunneling activities. This negative association is more pronounced for non-state-owned enterprises and firms whose chairmen and CEOs work in the respective hometowns. DCCC restrains tunneling activities through mechanisms by establishing an informal supervisory effect on CEOs because the CEOs fear reputational damage and strengthening cooperation between chairmen and CEOs. Further analyses suggest that this negative association is more significant when chairmen and CEOs are non-controlling shareholders, but the association is weakened during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) crisis.

As dialect is a carrier of culture, this study's results imply that cultural proximity can replace formal mechanisms to enhance corporate governance.

The relationship between the amount of executive compensation and the size of the firm has long been a disputed area of economics. Baumol (1959) was among the first to observe that firm size and executive compensation appear to be positively correlated. This view was further supported by the works of McGuire, Chin and Elbing (1962), Ciscel (1974), and Walkling & Long (1984). Other studies (see e.g., Lewellen and Huntsman (1970) have contended that profit maximization is the principal determinant of variations in executive compensation. More recently, a debate has raged in the popular press as to whether executives of the auto industry deserve the largest salaries recently awarded them (see e.g., Fortune 1984).

This paper discusses perquisites for executives.

This as a viewpoint paper in which the authors discuss perquisites for executives.

Not only must the amounts of compensation, perquisites in particular, be listed, the Compensation Committee of the Board (or equivalent group) must also provide the rationale for these pay elements and the total package.

Provides a viewpoint on perquisites for executives.

This paper aims to examine the impact of managerial equity ownership on return on assets as a measure of profitability and two financial statement‐based agency cost measures, i.e. asset utilization and an expense ratio, which proxy for management's efficiency in use of assets and perquisite consumption, respectively.

Multivariate tests are constructed to examine the nonlinear relation between managerial equity ownership and both profitability and agency costs, using interaction terms to capture the relation at various levels of managerial ownership.

The paper documents that managerial equity ownership is nonlinearly and positively associated with return on assets and asset utilization, and nonlinearly and negatively associated with the expense ratio, after controlling for firm size, leverage, corporate diversification, institutional ownership, research intensity, firm age, and executive stock options.

The results imply that the ability of managerial equity ownership to reduce agency costs decreases as levels of ownership increase. Further, the results indicate that, in some industries, high levels of ownership lead to increased expense ratios, suggesting increased perquisite consumption. Finally, these results suggest that, above a certain level in some industries, managerial equity ownership only marginally encourages efficient asset utilization but does not significantly deter excessive spending.

The paper provides a link between research that demonstrates a linear relation between managerial equity ownership and financial‐statement based profitability and agency cost measures and research that finds a nonlinear relation between managerial equity ownership and Tobin's Q, a proxy for firm performance.

This paper aims to study the impact of external fairness of executive compensation on M&A premium, and examine the moderate role of institutional investors. The high M&A premium is the main factors that induce the huge impairment of listed companies’ goodwill and the plummeting performance. Executives are the decision-makers of M&As, and their decision-making process is inevitably affected by the psychological factors. In recent years, institutional investors have become an important external force that can affect the governance of listed companies.

The authors use M&A data of listed companies from 2008 to 2018 and use OLS regression to test the relationship between executive compensation fairness and M&A premium.

The results show that the lower the external fairness of executive compensation, the greater the M&A premium. Institutional investors can effectively reduce the impact of external compensation unfairness on M&A premiums. The mechanism tests show that executives' psychological perception of fairness induced by external unfairness reduces their motivation to work and prompts them to use high premium to seek alternative compensation incentives. Further examinations of executive characteristics and corporate characteristics show that the role of external unfairness in executive compensation in driving M&A premiums is more pronounced in companies with longer executive tenure, weaker executive reputation incentives and private property.

This paper enriches the research on the pre-factors of M&A premiums from the perspective of executives’ psychological perception of fairness, provides evidence that institutional investors play a positive governance role and provides decision-making references for companies to take corresponding measures to reduce M&A premium risks.

This paper aims to examine the impact of public scrutiny on chief executive officer (CEO) compensation at Standard & Poor’s (S&P) 500 firms.

This paper uses the unique opportunity provided by the 2008 financial crisis and, in particular, government support and legislated compensation restrictions in the US Department of the Treasury’s Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). It aggregates monetary and non-monetary executive compensation information from 2006 to 2012, with firm- and manager-level data. It presents univariate summary compensation results and uses multivariate regression analysis to isolate the impact of public scrutiny and legislated compensation restrictions on executive pay.

Overall, the results are consistent, with increased public scrutiny having a lasting impact on perks and temporary impact on wage and legislated compensation restrictions having a temporary impact on wage. Changes in specific perk items provide evidence on which perks firms perceive as excessive and which provide common value.

The paper contributes to the discussion of perks as excess by introducing a novel data set of perk compensation at S&P500 firms and by studying how firms choose to alter levels of specific perk items in response to increased public scrutiny and legislated compensation restrictions. The paper contributes to the literature on executive pay as there has been little inquiry into the impact of public scrutiny on compensation. Public scrutiny could be an important source of external governance if firms change behavior in response to explicit and implicit scrutiny costs.