How the CEO power and age dissimilarity shape the chair-CEO pay gap: Empirical evidence from China

Using data on China’s listed firms from 2009 to 2018, this paper investigates how the chair-CEO age dissimilarity and CEO power affect the chair-CEO pay gap from both managerial power theory and optimal contract theory. We find that CEO power and age dissimilarity have opposite effects on pay gap between the chairman and the CEO. And the cognitive conflict caused by age dissimilarity can effectively restrain the compensation-seeking behavior of CEO for non-performance compensation growth. More importantly, both the age difference and its sign have important value. When we consider age dissimilarity between the CEO and the entire board of directors, our hypotheses are still confirmed. Finally, we document that both CEO ability and co-working time between chairman and CEO could reduce the inhibition effect of age dissimilarity on compensation incentive from capability and relationship view. Overall, the results are beneficial to reform the top managers’ compensation incentive system and to improve the explicit and implicit supervision mechanisms.