Teaching standard costs: A look at textbook differences in overhead variance analysis

Procedures for calculating the two-way, three-way and four-way analysis of overhead variances can differ significantly among cost accounting textbooks. This study uses a common problem framework to compare the isolation of overhead variances in 20 cost accounting textbooks that present the current, yet different methods of overhead variance analysis.     

CEO pay incentives and risk-taking: Evidence from bank acquisitions

We analyze how the structure of executive compensation affects the risk choices made by bank CEOs. For a sample of acquiring U.S. banks, we employ the Merton distance to default model to show that CEOs with higher pay-risk sensitivity engage in risk-inducing mergers. Our findings are driven by two types of acquisitions: acquisitions completed during the last decade (after bank deregulation had expanded banks' risk-taking opportunities) and acquisitions completed by the largest banks in our sample (where shareholders benefit from ‘too big to fail’ support by regulators and gain most from shifting risk to other stakeholders). Our results control for CEO pay-performance sensitivity and offer evidence consistent with a causal link between financial stability and the risk-taking incentives embedded in the executive compensation contracts at banks.     

Growth through rigidity: An explanation for the rise in CEO pay

The dramatic rise in CEO compensation during the 1990s and early 2000s is a longstanding puzzle. In this paper, we show that much of the rise can be explained by a tendency of firms to grant the same number of options each year. Number-rigidity implies that the grant-date value of option awards will grow with firm equity returns, which were very high on average during the tech boom. Further, other forms of CEO compensation did not adjust to offset the dramatic growth in the value of option pay. Number-rigidity in options can also explain the increased dispersion in pay, the difference in growth between the US and other countries, and the increased correlation between pay and firm-specific equity returns. We present evidence that number-rigidity arose from a lack of sophistication about option valuation that is akin to money illusion. We show that regulatory changes requiring transparent expensing of the grant-date value of options led to a decline in number-rigidity and helps explain why executive pay increased less with equity returns during the housing boom in the mid-2000s.     

CEO pay cuts and forced turnover: Their causes and consequences

We study large discrete decreases in CEO pay and compare them to CEO forced turnover. The determinants are similar, as are the performance improvements after the action. After the pay cut, the CEO pay-for-performance sensitivity is abnormally high, such that the CEO can restore his pay level by reversing the poor performance. After either a pay cut or forced turnover, CEOs reduce investment and leverage, and improve performance, on average. Together, our results show that the possibility of these large compensation cuts provides ex ante incentives for CEOs to exert effort to avoid poor performance and that CEOs take actions to improve poor performance once pay is cut. The similarity of the causes and outcomes of large pay cuts compared to forced turnover suggests that large pay cuts are used as a substitute for forced turnover, helping to explain why forced turnover is rare.     

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.     

Excessive financial services CEO pay and financial crisis: Evidence from calibration estimation

The questions of whether there ever existed excessive risk-taking incentives from executive compensation in the financial industry, and whether top executives of financial services firms actually responded to such excessive incentives that eventually led to the crisis remain unanswered. The prior research has attempted to answer the second question, however, with conflicting evidence and without a clear definition of excessive. To answer the first question, this paper uses a numerical calibration approach to estimate the optimal level of CEO pay and derive the excessive compensation which provides excessive risk-taking incentives. We then examine the extent of excessive compensation in the financial industry relative to the non-financial industries during the 2000s and whether there were changes in compensation practices between the post Sarbanes–Oxley period and the pre-crisis period. We find mixed evidence in favor of the presence of higher excessive pay in the financial industry, and the CEO compensation practices remained largely unchanged over time. In addition, the relation between excessive pay and excessive risk-taking in the financial industry is somewhat weak, suggesting that CEO compensation might not be a major cause for the crisis in 2008.     

Ex ante CEO severance pay and risk-taking in the financial services sector

We examine 533 CEO severance contracts for financial services firms from 1997 to 2007 and find that ex ante severance pay is positively associated with risk-taking after controlling for the incentive effects provided by equity-based compensation. We report a positive causal relation between the amount of severance pay and risk-taking using popular market-based risk measures as well as the distance-to-default and the Z-score. We also find that severance pay encourages excessive risk-taking using metrics such as tail risk and asset quality. Our results are consistent with the risk-shifting argument and provide support for recent reforms on severance pay in the financial sector.     

Gender differences in reward-based crowdfunding

We document several gender differences in reward-based crowdfunding by analyzing a large sample of Kickstarter campaigns. We argue that these differences are most plausibly explained by male entrepreneurs’ relative over-optimism. Suggesting a tendency to overestimate the demand for their products, we find that male entrepreneurs set higher goal amounts, resulting in more frequent campaign failures. In successive campaigns, male entrepreneurs’ goal amounts and success rates converge toward those of female entrepreneurs, consistent with entrepreneurial experience mitigating the behavioral bias. Our findings suggest that entrepreneurs learn from experience, and that female first-time entrepreneurs may have more realistic expectations of the demand for their products, increasing their success rates in crowdfunding. Moreover, although serial entrepreneurs exhibit better performance already in their first campaigns, they still improve over successive campaigns, further highlighting the importance of entrepreneurial learning.     

Public interest accounting: A look at the issues

Within the last ten years, a very unique and controversial accounting organization, Accountants for the Public Interest, has been developed to assist previously unrepresented citizens and organizations in financial matters involving issues of broad public concern. This paper examines the fundamental issues that must be resolved in the minds of practicing accountants as regards implementation of the services, if the public interest accounting concept is to survive.     

Shareholder say on pay and CEO compensation: three strikes and the board is out

From 2011 in Australia, if over 25% of shareholders vote against a non‐binding remuneration resolution, firms are awarded a ‘strike’. We examine 237 firms that receive a strike relative to matched firms, and find no association with any measure of CEO pay. However, we do find that strike firms have higher book‐to‐market and leverage ratios, suggesting that the remuneration vote is not used to target excessive pay. We also find that firms respond to a strike by decreasing the discretionary bonus component of CEO pay by 57.10% more than non‐strike firms and increasing their remuneration disclosure by 10.95%.     

Gender differences in accounting education: an undergraduate exploration

There is increasing evidence that females are outperforming males in secondary education across a range of subjects. The data in higher education, however, is not so clear-cut. Several studies have been undertaken examining the impact of gender on undergraduate accounting performance, ranging from early year performance to that of later years, with conflicting results. Some of the literature suggests that gender differences are dependent on the type of assessment utilized, reporting that females tend to perform better than males in coursework assessments with the position being reversed for examinations. This paper examines gender differences across several performance measures both prior to and post entry into an Accounting and Finance degree. Data was collected from the population of honours graduates of 1998, 1999 and 2000 (n?=?132) on a thick sandwich Accounting and Finance degree at the Robert Gordon University in Scotland. All the data was extracted from student files to develop a multitude of independent performance related variables, categorized into: point of university entry data, early university performance data and final honours year performance data (examined on an individual module basis and also a global coursework and examination performance basis). Statistical differences were examined using a two independent sample technique, whereby the population was categorized by gender into male and female, with either a t-test or Mann–Whitney test being utilized dependent on the distribution of the independent variable. Only two gender differences were found: females outperformed their male counterparts in the first year accounting module and also in the auditing module, which was undertaken via distance learning during the third year of the programme. No gender differences were found in any of the final year modules, and this was also evident in the coursework and examination performance analysis. Single sex focus groups were set up to explore why gender differences were apparent in the auditing module.     

International differences in willingness to pay for reduced risks due to risk representation: evidence from cross-country surveys in Northeast Asia

International benefit transfer from developed countries is often used to evaluate international aid projects due to the lack of primary study in the policy country, particularly when the policy country is a developing one. This paper shows that different countries may have considerable differences in their willingness to pay (WTP) for risk reduction using three surveys with the same protocol carried out around the same time in a coastal city in China, Japan, and South Korea. Japanese WTP is more than the South Korean one. Chinese WTP changes greatly depending on price adjustment coefficients: purchasing power price index or real exchange rate, but it is not impacted by risk reduction representation as in Japan and South Korea. This result suggests that more attention needs to be paid to the effect of international cultural settings when applying international benefit transfers.     

Stock price crash risk and CEO power: Firm-level analysis

This study examines the impact of stock price crash risk on future CEO power. Using a large panel sample with 17,816 firm-year observations, we posit and find a significant negative impact of stock price crash risk on CEO power, suggesting that CEO power becomes smaller after stock price crashes. We also find that our results are stronger for firms with female CEOs and are largely driven by firms with shorter-tenure CEOs. In addition, we find that the significant negative impact of stock price crash risk on CEO power is diminished for firms with strong corporate governance. Our study responds to the call in Habib, Hasan, and Jiang (2018) by providing more empirical evidence on the consequences of stock price crash risk.     

A path analysis investigation of the relationships between CEO pay ratios and firm performance mediated by employee satisfaction

We posit that information about CEO pay ratios is important to investors because employees' perceived fairness of their firm’s CEO pay ratio has consequences for firm performance. We use path analysis to examine the association between firm performance and (1) the predicted CEO pay ratio as determined by economic factors (the fair component of CEO pay ratio) and (2) the predicted CEO pay ratio as determined by non-economic factors (the unfair component of CEO pay ratio). We test for the existence and relative importance of direct and indirect paths using two measures of employee satisfaction and two measures of firm performance. We find that pay equity, a larger CEO pay ratio driven by economic factors, is associated with employee contributions to better firm performance. Conversely, we show that pay inequity, a larger CEO pay ratio driven by non-economic factors, is associated with employees' contributions to poorer firm performance. Consistent with the view that managerial entrenchment may amplify the negative effects of the CEO pay ratio, we find that the negative indirect path between pay inequity and firm performance, mediated by employee satisfaction, is more pronounced in firms with entrenched CEOs. Our findings contribute to the accounting compensation literature because they are consistent with CEO pay ratio information having economic consequences.     

Gender differences in defined contribution pension decisions

This paper considers gender differences in allocation of household wealth to defined contribution pensions. Using data from the 1989 Survey of Consumer Finances, we estimate the coefficient of relative risk aversion based on the allocation of wealth into defined contribution pensions. Unlike previous studies, we consider the problem in the context of the household’s overall portfolio. We find that women exhibit greater relative risk aversion in their allocation of wealth into defined contribution pension assets.     

Show me the money-cut: Shareholder dividend suspensions and voluntary CEO pay cuts during the COVID pandemic

Many US companies with December 31, 2019 as their fiscal year end had their Annual Shareholder Meeting scheduled (usually online) during the COVID pandemic. Unexpectedly faced with significant changes in operating environments, some companies decided to suspend shareholder dividend payments. In normal circumstances, this would be interpreted as a very negative event and shareholders could be expected to respond adversely at the annual meeting. However, we investigate whether CEOs were able to maintain shareholder support by offering a previously unheard of response of “sharing the pain”, committing to cut their own pay following a dividend suspension. At issue is whether investors acted as if they updated their inferences using the new voluntary pay-cut decision to infer the extent to which the CEOs underlying personality type was well matched to crisis management. We estimate an instrumental variables model in which the dividend suspension is used as an instrument for the endogenous pay cut variable.     

Bank CEO materialism: Risk controls,culture and tail risk

We investigate how the prevalence of materialistic bank CEOs has evolved over time, and how risk management policies, non-CEO executives’ behavior and tail risk vary with CEO materialism. We document that the proportion of banks run by materialistic CEOs increased significantly from 1994 to 2004, that the strength of risk management functions is significantly lower for banks with materialistic CEOs, and that non-CEO executives in banks with materialistic CEOs insider trade more aggressively around government intervention during the financial crisis. Finally, we find that banks with materialistic CEOs have significantly more downside tail risk relative to banks with non-materialistic CEOs.