Can economic bonus programs jeopardize service relationships?

Research findings on the impact of economic bonus programs on service relationships are contradictory. While some studies find positive effects of economic bonus programs on customer’s relational behavior, other studies demonstrate negative effects. Building on self-determination theory, Dholakia (J Market Res 43(2):109–120, 2006) points at a possible explanation for these conflicting results, arguing that economic marketing programs have negative effects on self-determined customers when the program is perceived as controlling by them. By testing the effect of four different kinds of economic bonus programs on loyalty in an experimental setting using a nationwide representative sample of 768 participants, this research is the first that provides empirical evidence that economic bonus programs can indeed endanger service relationships by reducing customer’s self-determination. Implications of our findings for the abundance of economic bonus programs offered to service customers these days are highlighted.     

中国：高储蓄、高投资和高增长研究

本文探讨了中国经济发展过程中长期存在的高储蓄、高投资和高增长并存的现象。文章认为：人口红利、工业化、城市化和市场化改革，是造成中国经济“三高”的实体经济因素和体制因素，这些因素并不能由宏观经济政策予以调整。文章最后提出了大力发展直接融资的改革对策。     

The relevance of financial statement information for executive performance evaluation: Evidence from choice of bonus plan accounting performance measures

I explore whether the type of accounting performance measure used in the CEO bonus plan provides an indication of the informativeness of the firm's financial statements for purposes of performance evaluation. Using contingency table analysis and LOGIT regressions, I find firms with high levels of unrecorded intangible assets rely significantly less often on accounting rate-of-return measures (vs. earnings alone) in executive bonus plans.     

EVA应用于薪酬激励制度的思考

本文描述了EVA的基本原理,在深入探讨传统薪酬激励制度及其弊端的基础上,系统地研究了EVA在薪酬制度中的应用,包括奖金数额的确定、奖金银行以及与EVA奖金计划相结合的杠杆股票期权;此外,分析了EVA薪酬激励制度所具有的特点     

垄断行业高管薪酬的个税调控探讨

合理的收入分配制度是社会公平正义的最重要体现。针对收益不合理收入的垄断行业高管加强个税调控,是促进形成合理的收入分配制度的当务之需。而具体可通过选定合适的税基模式,针对垄断行业高管的薪酬加成征收个人所得税,以实现收入分配结果相对公平,同时彰显个人所得税法的实质正义,促进社会的和谐发展。     

中国的改革红利如何生成——基于利益集团和制度分析的视角

中国改革红利生成与跨越中等收入陷阱的关键就是构建抵御利益集团对经济负面作用的制度体系。建立权力的制约体系并切断权力与利益集团的直接联系，建立公正的政策和制度制定的程序，提高制度质量并保障制度的有效实施是构建抵御利益集团对经济负面作用的制度体系的三大条件。我国释放改革红利的制度空间还很大，这主要表现在以下四个方面：构建有限政府，处理好政府与市场的关系；构建发展型国家，实现从非直接统治型国家向直接统治型国家的转型；完善市场经济体制，防止权贵的市场经济；加快政治体制改革，建立和完善社会主义民主与法治的制度体系。     

Top Executive Pay in the United Kingdom: A Corporate Governance Dilemma

This study represents a first attempt in the UK literature to split total pay into salary, annual bonus and share options for the purpose of empirically verifying how each is related to executive performance. As predicted from earlier studies on total pay, salaries were found primarily determined by firm size. Contarary to prior research, however, our findings suggest a pronounced link does exist between performance and pay over both the short- and long-term. This is manifested particularly by the magnitude of the coefficient estimates found between changes in shareholders return and changes in executive share options. This finding strongly suggests that the leverage executives achieve, on average, in their rewards as share prices increase may well be substantial; a finding that has not been captured in previous research on executive remuneration and which is of considerable relevance to the current corporate governance debates.     

Silence can be golden: On the value of allowing managers to keep silent when information is soft

Most information that public firms are required to disclose is relatively hard (e.g., historical information), whereas the disclosure of relevant information that is softer in nature (e.g., forward-looking information) is typically left to firms' discretion. The lack of a mandatory requirement to disclose soft information has been at the heart of a number of on-going accounting debates. This study shows that while mandating disclosure increases the frequency of disclosure, it results in a reduction in disclosure quality when information is soft. By exploring this tradeoff, the paper sheds light on the merits of restricting mandatory disclosure requirements to verifiable information and leaving disclosure of soft information unregulated. The value of leaving disclosure unregulated is shown to be maximized when managers are given bonus-based compensation, with minimum performance thresholds and maximum caps, similar to those documented in the literature.     

You Don't Always Get What You Pay For: Bonuses,Perceived Income and Effort

Abstract. Consider a principal–agent relationship in which more effort by the agent raises the likelihood of success. This paper provides conditions such that no success bonus induces the agent to exert more effort and the optimal contract is independent of success. Moreover, success bonuses may even reduce effort and thus the probability of success. The reason is that bonuses increase the perceived income of the agent and can hence reduce his willingness to exert effort. This perceived income effect has to be weighed against the incentive effect of the bonus. The tradeoff is determined by the marginal effect of effort on the success probability in relation to this probability itself (success hazard‐rate of effort). The paper also discusses practical implications of the finding.     

Cost behavior and executive bonus compensation

Prior literature provides compelling evidence of an asymmetric relation between executive bonus compensation and earnings performance. In particular, this literature reports that compensation committees assign greater weight to good (positive) earnings performance than poor (negative) earnings performance. Taken together, the prior literature provides strong support for critics who claim that compensation committees blindly protect executives from earnings underperformance. We further examine this issue by investigating whether a firm's cost behavior (i.e., the relation between expenses and sales) provides an explanation for the apparent inefficiency in executive compensation contracts. Our evidence suggests that executives are rewarded more for increases in ROA that arise from normal cost behavior than other increases in ROA consistent with these increases being perceived as more persistent. In contrast, we do not find such a relationship for decreases in ROA which suggests that executives are largely shielded from decreases in ROA that follow normal cost behavior. We examine two factors suggested by the prior literature, expected future sales and the extent of capacity utilization, which may provide an explanation for why executives are shielded from normal cost behavior decreases in ROA. When these additional factors are included in our empirical models, our evidence suggests that the asymmetric relation between changes in CEO bonus compensation and increases and decreases in earnings performance documented in prior literature goes away. That is, our results suggest that compensation committees do not blindly protect executives for earnings underperformance. On the contrary, our evidence suggests that these committees take into account other non-earnings information when deciding how much weight to give to a decrease in earnings and that executive compensation may not be as inefficient as suggested by prior research.