Is there a gender gap in CEO compensation?

The gender pay gap generates significant political and social debate. This study contributes to this discussion by examining if a gender pay gap exists at the highest level of corporate management, the CEOs. While previous studies have documented a gender pay gap for most levels of executives the findings with respect to CEOs are conflicting. In this paper we focus only on CEO's as it is the most homogenous of executive roles and does not require us to assume that executives with similar titles undertake identical roles. Our evidence is based on 291 US firm-years for the period of 1998–2010. We do not find any association between CEO pay and gender using both the total sample and a sample matched using propensity scores to control for firm characteristics. These insignificant results hold for total pay, salary and bonuses, and for different matching procedures and econometric specifications. Our results therefore indicate that women who rise through the “glass ceiling” to the level of CEO are remunerated at similar levels to their male counterparts.     

Managerial power theory, tournament theory, and executive pay in China

In this paper, we test two models of executive pay that have not received much attention in research on Chinese listed companies: managerial power theory and tournament theory. We find that structural power (executive share ownership) and prestige power (executive education) are significantly positively related to executive remuneration, and political power (Executive/Party Secretary duality) positively and weakly related to executive remuneration. We also find that executive directors' organization level (as reflected in executive pay level for each of the three highest paid executives) is positively related to executive remuneration and the relationship is convex, and negatively related to the interaction between executive directors' organization level and government ownership. Tournament prize (executive pay) is not related to the number of contestants in the tournament and is negatively related to the interaction term between number of contestants and government ownership. Finally, earnings per share (EPS) as a measure of firm performance is positively related to the pay gap between contestants and negatively related to the interaction term between pay gap and government ownership. We explore the implications of these findings for reforming corporate governance in China.     

关键下属高管晋升锦标赛的创新激励效应研究

本文以2006-2016年我国A股上市公司为样本,探讨关键下属高管与CEO之间的薪酬差距如何影响企业创新.研究发现:关键下属高管-CEO薪酬差距越大,企业创新产出越高.进一步地,相比整个高管团队内部的薪酬差距,关键下属高管与CEO之间的薪酬差距对企业创新的影响更强;关键下属高管-CEO薪酬差距对企业创新的激励效应主要体现在关键下属高管晋升CEO的机会较大时,以及国有企业和技术密集型行业中.此外,降低代理成本是关键下属高管-CEO薪酬差距促进企业创新的重要作用机制,且关键下属高管-CEO薪酬差距促进了企业创新对企业价值的提升作用.本文研究结论对推动企业创新及优化上市公司高管薪酬激励体系具有重要的现实意义.     

Women in leadership: an analysis of the gender pay gap in ASX‐listed firms

This study provides evidence that after several decades of fighting for equal pay for equal work, an unexplained gender pay gap remains amongst senior executives in ASX‐listed firms. After controlling for a large suite of personal, occupational and firm observables, we find female senior executives receive, on average, 22.58 percent less in base salary for the period 2002–2013. When executives are awarded performance‐based pay, females receive on average 16.47 percent less in cash bonus and 18.21 percent less in long‐term incentives than males. The results are robust to using firm fixed effects and propensity‐score matching. Blinder–Oaxaca decomposition results show that the mean pay gap cannot be attributed to gender differences in attributes, including job titles. Instead, the results point to differences in returns on firm‐specific variables, in particular firm risk.     

董事会断裂带与企业薪酬差距

高管与普通员工之间的薪酬差距不仅影响着企业的激励效率与企业价值,还关系到社会的公平与稳定。断裂带是Lau and Murnighan(1998)提出的假想的分割线概念,即可以将团队划分为多个小团体。以2005—2019年中国A股上市公司为样本,本文从董事会断裂带这一视角探索董事会中小团体的差异性对于薪酬差距的影响和后果。本文研究发现:(1)董事会断裂带的存在加剧了企业高管与普通员工之间的薪酬差距;(2)分解董事会断裂带的类型后,由深层特征形成的断裂带对于薪酬差距的影响高于由表层特征形成的断裂带;(3)区分行业竞争的程度后,公司所在行业的激烈竞争有助于缓解董事会断裂带造成的薪酬差距扩大;(4)从经济后果来看,董事会断裂带造成的薪酬差距对企业绩效具有显著的负向影响。本文的研究有助于深入理解企业薪酬差距形成的机制及其后果,同时对于完善我国董事会的监督机制也有一定的现实启发。     

Working capital (mis)management – impact of executive age

Several recent studies have used the upper echelons theory to explain the impact of personal traits of top executives on various corporate policies. In this, first of its kind, study we find that older executives invest more in working capital; take longer to convert inventories to cash; and pay their suppliers sooner. These findings are consistent with the argument that risk aversion increases with executive age. Our findings indicate that executive age has significant bearing on working capital management policies. This study also initiates new avenues in research relating behavioral aspect of executives with short‐term financial management.     

Do Female Executives Prioritize Corporate Social Responsibility?

How do female executives view corporate social responsibility (CSR)? Previous studies have reported mixed findings on the relationship between female executives and CSR. We select a sample of Chinese listed firms and use propensity score matching to construct a new sample of firms and evaluate the gender transition (from male to female) of chief executive officers or board chairpersons (executives) who are randomly assigned to firms (i.e., the gender transition of executives is regarded as an exogenous event). Subsequently, we use a difference-in-differences approach to identify the pure effect of female executives on CSR. Our results indicate that female executives are more likely to encourage CSR reporting. Moreover, we suggest that the mechanism behind female executives prioritizing CSR is altruism preference rather than risk aversion preference.     

Does the Presence of Female Executives Curb Earnings Management? Evidence from Korea

We investigate the role of female executives in curbing earnings management behaviour in Korea, a country known for its strong male‐dominant culture. In a sample of Korean firms from 2002 to 2010, we find that female presence in top management is negatively associated with discretionary accruals, suggesting that gender diversity in senior management deters opportunistic financial reporting even in a highly male‐dominant corporate environment. Further, this association is primarily observed in firms with stronger (weaker) female (male) dominance. This finding is consistent with the idea that female executives can exert more influence on corporate decisions in a more female‐friendly environment. These findings have implications for academics and practitioners seeking to understand the impact of the role of top executive gender diversity in corporate accounting practices.     

Gender and corporate finance: Are male executives overconfident relative to female executives?

We examine corporate financial and investment decisions made by female executives compared with male executives. Male executives undertake more acquisitions and issue debt more often than female executives. Further, acquisitions made by firms with male executives have announcement returns approximately 2% lower than those made by female executive firms, and debt issues also have lower announcement returns for firms with male executives. Female executives place wider bounds on earnings estimates and are more likely to exercise stock options early. This evidence suggests men exhibit relative overconfidence in significant corporate decision making compared with women.     

Contestability and Pay Differential in the Executive Suites

In comparison to the abundant evidence on CEOs' compensations, little is known about the compensation of other senior executives, and on how the pay differential between CEO and other senior executives affects firm performance. We examine several potential explanations of the pay differential in the executive suite, using a sample of 367 Israeli firms listed on the Tel-Aviv Stock Exchange. The empirical results fail to support the tournament and pay equity models. Instead, our evidence suggests a model where senior executives are encouraged (by the structure implied in their pay contract) to cooperate with each other (the team playing model). In a subset of firms managed by their owners we observe greater pay differentials between the owner-CEO and other senior executives. Interestingly, only in this subset of owner-managed firms, higher pay differentials can be associated with better firm performance.     

Pay at the executive suite: How do US banks compensate their top management teams?

This study examines how a large sample of US banks compensates their top management teams (i.e., the top four to five highest ranking executives in each bank). We observe two tiers of compensation in the executive suite: the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and the rest of the top management team. CEOs receive not only greater pay in absolute dollar, but are also rewarded more in relation to performance, as manifested in having a larger portion of their pay in performance contingent compensation. Below the CEO, top executives have similar compensation structure and pay to performance elasticities. The results are robust to a significant size effect, and alternate measures of performance.     

Political promotion incentives and within-firm pay gap: Evidence from China

In this paper, we investigate how the promotion incentive of politicians affects the pay gap between executives and employees in local firms. We find that the promotion incentive of local politicians significantly reduces the within-firm pay gap. This effect is more pronounced for large firms, firms in regions subject to more government intervention, state-owned-enterprises, private firms with political connections, and firms with more geographically concentrated operations. Our findings are robust to the use of the loss of top-rank political connections and economics loss due to earthquakes as instrumental variables for the promotion incentive. Furthermore, a reduction in pay gap is mainly driven by an increase in employee pay, instead of a decrease in executive pay. Overall, this study sheds light on the determinants of within-firm pay gaps from the perspective of the career concerns of local politicians.     

管理层权力、高管人力资本激励与企业绩效

合理的高管人力资本激励机制是发挥高管人力资本效用进而提高企业绩效的有效途径。本文通过实证检验管理层权力、高管人力资本激励与企业绩效的关系,结果表明:高管货币薪酬与企业绩效显著正相关,与国有企业相比,非国有企业的相关性更明显;管理层权力削弱了高管货币薪酬对企业绩效的激励作用。国有企业的在职消费与企业绩效显著负相关,但非国有企业其二者之间的相关性并不显著;管理层权力加大了在职消费对企业绩效的负向影响。高管团队内部薪酬差距与企业绩效显著正相关,且非国有企业比国有企业的相关性更明显;管理层权力削弱了高管团队内部薪酬差距对企业绩效的激励作用。     

Confucian culture and the external pay gap

We examine the impact of Confucian philosophy on external pay gaps, and find that a Confucianist atmosphere is negatively associated with firms’ external pay gaps for both executives and employees. Mechanistically, the Confucian concept of “righteousness” reduces the self-interested motivation of management, in turn reducing executives’ external pay gap; “humaneness” causes management to focus on protecting employees’ rights and interests, benefiting employees’ compensation; and “honesty” improves information disclosure, reducing the external compensation gap for both executives and general employees. The inhibitory effect of Confucian culture on the external pay gap is greater in regions with weak formal institutions and non-state-owned firms, while foreign cultural shocks attenuate the Confucian influence. Finally, the Confucian culture-driven reduction of the external pay gap improves enterprises’ economic efficiency.     

Gender pay gap in American CFOs: Theory and evidence

Studies document persistent unexplained gender-based wage gap in labor markets. At the executive level, where skill and education are similar, career interruptions and differences in risk preferences primarily explain the extant gender-based pay gap. This study focuses on CFO compensation contracts of Execucomp firms (1992–2020) and finds no gender-based pay gap. This paper offers several explanations for this phenomenon, such as novel evidence on the risk preferences of females with financial expertise and changes in the social and regulatory climate.     

The investment opportunity set,director ownership,and corporate policies: evidence from an emerging market

This paper provides evidence of the association between a firm's investment opportunity set (IOS), director ownership, and corporate policy choices. Using a sample of growth and non-growth firms in an emerging Asian market, we find that the IOS theory has significant explanatory power in the financing, dividend, executive compensation, and leasing aspects of corporate policies. Growth firms have lower debt-to-equity ratios and dividend yields, pay higher cash compensation and bonus amounts to their top executives, and finance a higher proportion of their asset acquisitions through operating leases. We also find that director ownership moderates and counteracts the association between IOS and corporate policies. Our results are consistent with contracting theory predictions that high director ownership mitigates the need for incentive or bonus compensation plans in growth firms.     

New development: Women with altitude—exploring the influence of female presence and leadership on boards of directors

This article reports on a study examining the influence of women on the boards of directors of NHS foundation trusts in England in the light of a recent UK government inquiry into women in senior positions. A high female presence among executive and non-executive directorships did not result in significant differences either in financial return or service quality. However, female chairs or chief executives resulted in significant reductions in negative social outcomes, such as lower clinical negligence costs, without harming financial management. The findings have important implications for gender diversity and gender targets on the boards of directors in business and other sectors.     

Tournament incentives,age diversity and firm performance

This study introduces a new dimension, age diversity of non-CEO executives, which moderates the relationship between promotion-based tournament incentives, measured as the pay gap between the CEO and non-CEO executives, and firm performance. For a sample of Chinese listed firms from 2005 to 2015, we find that the tournament incentives for non-CEO executives relate positively to firm performance. This relationship is weaker when non-CEO executives are from different age cohorts, whereas the tournament effect is enhanced when non-CEO executives are from the same age cohort. The negative moderation effect of age diversity is more pronounced in state firms and in the Northern China Plain cultural region. The negative moderation effect disappears in firms with CEOs who have overseas experience. We reason that the peer pressure among the similar-aged non-CEO executives enhances the tournament competition and that age hierarchy reduces incentives for younger executives to compete. Our findings have important implications for firms not only in China, but also in countries and regions where seniority is highly valued when setting executive compensation and optimizing organizational structure.     

How does the executive pay gap influence audit fees? The roles of R&D investment and institutional ownership

Using a sample of US firms from 2003–2014, this study examines how the executive pay gap affects audit fees for firms with different levels of R&D investment and institutional ownership. Consistent with managerial power theory, we find that the executive pay gap is positively associated with audit fees, and that the positive association is attenuated by intense R&D investment and higher institutional ownership. We also find that the executive pay gap more strongly affects audit fees after the passage of the 2010 Dodd–Frank Act and the PCAOB's 2012 call to identify the audit risk related to executive incentive compensation. Additional analyses show that the moderating effects of R&D investment and institutional ownership on the pay gap–audit fees association are not conditional on auditor tenure, but the moderating effect of institutional ownership is stronger for firms hiring specialist auditors. Collectively, our findings suggest that auditors consider the business context, such as innovation initiative and external monitoring, when assessing audit risk related to the executive pay gap.