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.     

CEO DIRECTORS,EXECUTIVE INCENTIVES,AND CORPORATE STRATEGIC INITIATIVES

I study how directors who are chief executive officers (CEOs) of other firms affect board effectiveness. I find that CEOs are paid more and their compensation is less sensitive to firm performance when other CEOs serve as directors. This is not an employment risk premium because CEO directors are not associated with higher turnover‐performance sensitivity. Also, CEO directors have no effect on corporate innovation but are associated with higher acquisition returns, especially for complex deals. My results suggest that the advisory benefits of CEO directors must be balanced against the distortions in executive incentives associated with their board service.     

The efficiency of compensation contracting in China: Do better CEOs get better paid?

Over recent years, China adopted a number of ‘western-style’ reforms of corporate governance and executive compensation. We investigate whether boards of Chinese firms evaluate CEO ability and remunerate their CEOs accordingly, an essential tenet of efficient compensation contracting. Using Data Envelopment Analysis to measure CEO ability, we do not find any evidence that CEO ability matters in compensation contracting decisions—it does not lead to either higher pay, stronger pay-for-performance sensitivity, or a higher likelihood of equity grants. This is surprising, since we find evidence that higher ability CEOs achieve superior firm performance. In contrast, we find that powerful CEOs do not overperform, while they enjoy large abnormal pay. Overall, our results suggest that Chinese firms fail to embrace new corporate governance reforms and are unable to fully utilize the reforms’ benefits.

     

高管连锁、同业监督与公司违规

本文选取2011—2018年度A股上市公司为研究样本,以具有竞争关系的同业公司间的高管连锁作为同业监督的渠道,检验了同业监督对目标公司违规的影响。研究发现:(1)同业监督能有效抑制目标公司违规倾向,且这一影响当且仅当连锁公司是同业公司时存在;(2)同业竞争是同业监督的基础,在行业集中度低和行业增长率低的行业中,同业监督对目标公司违规的抑制作用更强;(3)目标公司的政治关联会瓦解同业监督对公司违规的抑制作用;(4)区分违规行为类型后发现,同业监督对经营违规的抑制作用最强,对信息披露违规次之,对领导人违规几乎没有效果。本研究丰富了公司违规监督机制的内容,也提供了辩证看待高管同业兼任的新视角。     

Peer firms in relative performance evaluation

Relative performance evaluation (RPE) in chief executive officer (CEO) compensation provides insurance against external shocks and yields a more informative measure of CEO actions. I argue that empirical evidence on the use of RPE is mixed because previous studies rely on a misspecified peer group. External shocks and flexibility in responding to the shocks are functions of, for example, the firm's technology, the complexity of the organization, and the ability to access external credit, which depend on firm size. When peers are composed of similar industry-size firms, evidence is consistent with the use of RPE in CEO compensation.     

Peer choice in CEO compensation

Current research shows that firms are more likely to benchmark against peers that pay their Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) higher compensation, reflecting self serving behavior. We propose an alternative explanation: the choice of highly paid peers represents a reward for unobserved CEO talent. We test this hypothesis by decomposing the effect of peer selection into talent and self serving components. Consistent with our prediction, we find that the association between a firm's selection of highly paid peers and CEO pay mostly represents compensation for CEO talent.     

Do peer firms influence innovation?

Using a large sample of 4,545 US firms over the period 1968–2018, we find robust and significant positive peer effects on corporate innovation. Consistent with the need to keep ahead or abreast of rivals, we document an increase in peer firms’ influence with product market competition. Our further analyses show interesting leader–follower interactions with firms following or adopting innovation policies of counterparts perceived or likely to have superior information. This finding supports the information-based motives of mimicking. More importantly, we show that adopting peers’ innovation policies is associated with improvements in long-term innovation outputs and product market performance. Our results suggest that peer effects are a critical determinant of corporate innovation in addition to other factors examined so far in the literature.     

Do corporate governance mechanisms influence CEO compensation? An empirical investigation of UK companies

The aim of this paper is to empirically examine the influence of corporate governance mechanisms, that is, ownership and board structure of companies, on the level of CEO compensation for a sample of 414 large UK companies for the fiscal year 2003/2004. The results show that measures of board and ownership structures explain a significant amount of cross-sectional variation in the total CEO compensation, which is the sum of cash and equity-based compensation, after controlling other firm characteristics. We find that firms with larger board size and a higher proportion of non-executive directors on their boards pay their CEOs higher compensation, suggesting that non-executive directors are not more efficient in monitoring than executive directors. We also find that institutional ownership and block-holder ownership have a significant and negative impact on CEO compensation. Our results are consistent with the existence of active monitoring by block-holders and institutional shareholders. Finally, the results show that CEO compensation is lower when the directors’ ownership is higher.     

Corporate cash holdings and CEO compensation incentives

We examine the effect of chief executive officer (CEO) compensation incentives on corporate cash holdings and the value of cash to better understand how compensation incentives designed to enhance the alignment of manager and shareholder interests could influence stockholder-bondholder conflicts. We find a positive relation between CEO risk-taking (vega) incentives and cash holdings, and we find a negative relation between vega and the value of cash to shareholders. The negative effect of vega on the value of cash is robust after controlling for corporate governance, is stronger in firms with high leverage, is reversed for unlevered firms, and is not present in financially constrained firms. We also find that the likelihood of liquidity covenants in new bank loans is increasing in CEO vega incentives. Our evidence primarily supports the costly contracting hypothesis, which asserts that bondholders anticipate greater risk-taking in high vega firms and, therefore, require greater liquidity.     

The costs of intense board monitoring

We study the effects of the intensity of board monitoring on directors' effectiveness in performing their monitoring and advising duties. We find that monitoring quality improves when a majority of independent directors serve on at least two of the three principal monitoring committees. These firms exhibit greater sensitivity of CEO turnover to firm performance, lower excess executive compensation, and reduced earnings management. The improvement in monitoring quality comes at the significant cost of weaker strategic advising and greater managerial myopia. Firms with boards that monitor intensely exhibit worse acquisition performance and diminished corporate innovation. Firm value results suggest that the negative advising effects outweigh the benefits of improved monitoring, especially when acquisitions or corporate innovation are significant value drivers or the firm's operations are complex.     

公司绩效、公司治理与管理者报酬实证研究

本文以中国深、沪两市在2004年上市公司样本作为公司绩效、公司治理与管理者报酬研究对象,从公司绩效、股权结构的安排以及董事会治理三个方面,通过构建最小二乘模型进行多元线性回归,来研究公司内部治理机制对公司管理层报酬的影响。研究结果表明:公司绩效、国有股比例、董事会规模、两职兼任均对管理者报酬产生显著的影响。     

Are all CEOs above average? An empirical analysis of compensation peer groups and pay design

Companies can potentially use compensation peer groups to inflate pay by choosing peers that are larger, choosing a high target pay percentile, or choosing peer firms with high pay. Although peers are largely selected based on characteristics that reflect the labor market for managerial talent, we find that peer groups are constructed in a manner that biases compensation upward, particularly in firms outside the Standard & Poor's (S&P) 500. Pay increases close only about one-third of the gap between the pay of the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and the peer group, however, suggesting that boards exercise discretion in adjusting compensation. Preliminary evidence suggests that increased disclosure has reduced the biases in peer group choice.     

Executive compensation and corporate governance in China

We investigate executive compensation and corporate governance in China's publicly traded firms. We also compare executive pay in China to the USA. Consistent with agency theory, we find that executive compensation is positively correlated to firm performance. The study shows that executive pay and CEO incentives are lower in State controlled firms and firms with concentrated ownership structures. Boardroom governance is important. We find that firms with more independent directors on the board have a higher pay-for-performance link. Non-State (private) controlled firms and firms with more independent directors on the board are more likely to replace the CEO for poor performance. Finally, we document that US executive pay (salary and bonus) is about seventeen times higher than in China. Significant differences in US-China pay persist even after controlling for economic and governance factors.     

Performance peer groups in CEO compensation contracts

How do firms choose performance peer groups used in chief executive officer (CEO) relative performance evaluation contracts? We find that while firms, for the most part, choose performance peers to better identify their CEOs’ impact on firm performance, they also tend to select underperforming peers. Dynamically, we find that peers that are added and retained every year are weaker than ones that were not chosen. These findings suggest managers may have some influence on the choice of performance peers. Finally, using a quasi-natural experiment, we find that enhanced disclosure did not affect the tendency of firms to select underperforming peers.     

CEO optimism and incentive compensation

I study the effect of chief executive officer (CEO) optimism on CEO compensation. Using data on compensation in US firms, I provide evidence that CEOs whose option exercise behavior and earnings forecasts are indicative of optimistic beliefs receive smaller stock option grants, fewer bonus payments, and less total compensation than their peers. These findings add to our understanding of the interplay between managerial biases and remuneration and show how sophisticated principals can take advantage of optimistic agents by appropriately adjusting their compensation contracts.     

Accounting conservatism and common ownership by dedicated institutional blockholders

We examine the peer effects of accounting conservatism in a common dedicated institutional blockholder (CDIB) setting. We find a positive correlation in accounting conservatism between focal firms and their CDIB peers. To corroborate our main findings, we document that the peer effect is stronger for firms connected through CDIBs that are activists or that have more active shares, for firms with larger CDIB ownership and for firms with weaker corporate governance mechanisms and higher information asymmetry. The results suggest that managers view following peer firms’ conservatism as a way of pleasing CDIBs. We also find that in proxy voting, firms receive less support from their investors when their conservatism deviates more from their CDIB peers. Finally, we find that the CDIB peer effect remains significant after controlling for the effect of industry and local peers. Overall, our paper presents evidence consistent with firms adapting their accounting conservatism in response to their incumbent dedicated institutional investors’ preference.     

Peer R&D disclosure and corporate innovation: Evidence from American depositary receipt firms

In this paper, we examine the effect of peer research and development (R&D) disclosures on corporate innovation. R&D disclosures can generate externalities for related firms, enabling those firms to better infer a project's likely payoffs and thus prioritize projects with higher net present values. We use a sample of foreign firms cross-listed on U.S. exchanges to investigate whether U.S. peer firms experience externalities from the cross-listing firm's R&D disclosures. We find that R&D disclosures by cross-listing firms are associated with greater innovation for industry peers in the U.S. market, especially when product market competition is high. The effect also varies with the home country's legal protection systems, disclosure environments, and accounting reporting rules. Cross-sectional analyses indicate that the externalities are more pronounced in industries or firms that rely more on external financing and firms subject to higher financial constraints; disclosures of higher quality appear to promote innovation by ameliorating financing frictions. Overall, this study provides evidence of R&D disclosure as an industry-wide determinant of innovation, thereby contributing to literature on the real effects of peer disclosures.     

Internal managerial promotions: Insider incentives and CEO succession

We identify and compare firms that promote a single executive (successor-incentive) and companies that conduct tournaments (tournament-incentive) among inside managers to succeed the CEO. Successor-incentive firms give more pay-for-performance compensation to the designated successor, are more likely in firms or industries where firm-specific human capital is more important to the CEO position and where the supply of potential outside CEO replacements is limited. In addition, these firms are associated with lower CEO turnover sensitivity to firm performance. Restricting firms that are suited for a successor-incentive promotion to a tournament-incentive promotion is associated with lower firm valuation.     

Do CEOs gain more in foreign acquisitions than domestic acquisitions?

This paper examines the impact of domestic and foreign acquisitions on chief executive officer (CEO) compensation packages using a sample of 147 completed bids by UK companies from 1999 to 2005. We find that foreign acquisitions lead to higher CEO compensation than domestic acquisitions. Overall, our findings suggest that CEOs have strong incentives to do foreign acquisitions rather than domestic acquisitions since they receive larger compensation following a foreign acquisition regardless of how poor firm performance is. Furthermore, we observe a positive and significant relation between CEO compensation and firm size during the pre-acquisition period for firms involved in foreign acquisitions, thus their CEOs would expect to increase their compensation package through foreign acquisitions. However, our results show that there is no significant link between firm size and CEO compensation during the pre-acquisition period for firms involved in domestic acquisitions.     

CEO risk-taking incentives and corporate social responsibility

We examine how firms adjust CEO risk-taking incentives in response to risk environments associated with their corporate social responsibility (CSR) standing. We find strong evidence that as a firm's CSR status improves (declines), increasing (decreasing) its risk-taking capacity, the firm responds by adjusting compensation contracts to increase (decrease) CEO risk-taking incentives (Vega). One channel of the adjustment is through stock option grants. Further analyses indicate that the positive CSR-Vega association is stronger in firms with better corporate governance and in industries where riskiness is more important. Our evidence indicates that firms are not passive in response to changes in CSR status and firm risk.