The Journal of Finance

The Journal of Finance publishes leading research across all the major fields of finance. It is one of the most widely cited journals in academic finance, and in all of economics. Each of the six issues per year reaches over 8,000 academics, finance professionals, libraries, and government and financial institutions around the world. The journal is the official publication of The American Finance Association, the premier academic organization devoted to the study and promotion of knowledge about financial economics.

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Incentive Compensation When Executives Can Hedge the Market: Evidence of Relative Performance Evaluation in the Cross Section

Published: 07/15/2003   |   DOI: 10.1111/1540-6261.00577

Gerald Garvey, Todd Milbourn

Little evidence exists that firms index executive compensation to remove the influence of marketwide factors. We argue that executives can, in principle, replicate such indexation in their private portfolios. In support, we find that market risk has little effect on the use of stock‐based pay for the average executive. But executives' ability to “undo” excessive market risk can be hindered by wealth constraints and inalienability of human capital. We replicate the standard result that there is little relative performance evaluation (RPE) for the average executive, but find strong evidence of RPE for younger executives and executives with less financial wealth.


Duration of Executive Compensation

Published: 07/26/2013   |   DOI: 10.1111/jofi.12085

RADHAKRISHNAN GOPALAN, TODD MILBOURN, FENGHUA SONG, ANJAN V. THAKOR

Extensive discussions on the inefficiencies of “short‐termism” in executive compensation notwithstanding, little is known empirically about the extent of such short‐termism. We develop a novel measure of executive pay duration that reflects the vesting periods of different pay components, thereby quantifying the extent to which compensation is short‐term. We calculate pay duration in various industries and document its correlation with firm characteristics. Pay duration is longer in firms with more growth opportunities, more long‐term assets, greater R&D intensity, lower risk, and better recent stock performance. Longer CEO pay duration is negatively related to the extent of earnings‐increasing accruals.