IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/corfin/v35y2015icp247-264.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Why are CEOs paid for good luck? An empirical comparison of explanations for pay-for-luck asymmetry

Author

Listed:
  • Campbell, T. Colin
  • Thompson, Mary Elizabeth

Abstract

We independently and jointly test multiple proposed explanations for chief executive officer (CEO) pay-for-luck asymmetry, comparing their contributions to the observed asymmetry. Measuring luck based on both stock and operating performance, we analyze pay asymmetry for both the average and median CEO. We document that favorable labor market opportunities—measuring executive retention concerns—most consistently underlie pay asymmetry across specifications, while CEO power and bankruptcy avoidance incentives are only weakly related. However, none of these independently explains pay asymmetry across our expanded tests. Our results highlight important empirical modeling concerns and provide valuable insight for future theoretical and empirical work.

Suggested Citation

  • Campbell, T. Colin & Thompson, Mary Elizabeth, 2015. "Why are CEOs paid for good luck? An empirical comparison of explanations for pay-for-luck asymmetry," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 35(C), pages 247-264.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:corfin:v:35:y:2015:i:c:p:247-264
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jcorpfin.2015.09.006
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0929119915001182
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.jcorpfin.2015.09.006?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Jeremy C. Short & David J. Ketchen & Timothy B. Palmer & G. Tomas M. Hult, 2007. "Firm, strategic group, and industry influences on performance," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 28(2), pages 147-167, February.
    2. Jayant R. Kale & Ebru Reis & Anand Venkateswaran, 2009. "Rank‐Order Tournaments and Incentive Alignment: The Effect on Firm Performance," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 64(3), pages 1479-1512, June.
    3. Edward I. Altman, 1968. "The Prediction Of Corporate Bankruptcy: A Discriminant Analysis," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 23(1), pages 193-194, March.
    4. Ke, Bin & Petroni, Kathy & Safieddine, Assem, 1999. "Ownership concentration and sensitivity of executive pay to accounting performance measures: Evidence from publicly and privately-held insurance companies," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 28(2), pages 185-209, December.
    5. Fabio Feriozzi, 2011. "Paying for observable luck," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 42(2), pages 387-415, June.
    6. Paul Gompers & Joy Ishii & Andrew Metrick, 2003. "Corporate Governance and Equity Prices," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 118(1), pages 107-156.
    7. Bengt Holmstrom, 1982. "Moral Hazard in Teams," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 13(2), pages 324-340, Autumn.
    8. Bizjak, John M. & Lemmon, Michael L. & Naveen, Lalitha, 2008. "Does the use of peer groups contribute to higher pay and less efficient compensation?," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 90(2), pages 152-168, November.
    9. Custódio, Cláudia & Ferreira, Miguel A. & Matos, Pedro, 2013. "Generalists versus specialists: Lifetime work experience and chief executive officer pay," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 108(2), pages 471-492.
    10. Brookman, Jeffrey T. & Thistle, Paul D., 2013. "Managerial compensation: Luck, skill or labor markets?," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 21(C), pages 252-268.
    11. ANITA M. McGAHAN & MICHAEL E. PORTER, 1997. "How Much Does Industry Matter, Really?," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 18(S1), pages 15-30, July.
    12. Grossman, Sanford J & Hart, Oliver D, 1983. "An Analysis of the Principal-Agent Problem," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 51(1), pages 7-45, January.
    13. Lifeng Gu & Dirk Hackbarth, 2013. "Governance and Equity Prices: Does Transparency Matter?," Review of Finance, European Finance Association, vol. 17(6), pages 1989-2033.
    14. Rajesh K. Aggarwal & Andrew A. Samwick, 2003. "Performance Incentives within Firms: The Effect of Managerial Responsibility," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 58(4), pages 1613-1650, August.
    15. A. Louis Calvet & Abdul H. Rahman, 2006. "The Subjective Valuation of Indexed Stock Options and Their Incentive Effects," The Financial Review, Eastern Finance Association, vol. 41(2), pages 205-227, May.
    16. Marianne Bertrand & Sendhil Mullainathan, 2001. "Are CEOs Rewarded for Luck? The Ones Without Principals Are," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 116(3), pages 901-932.
    17. Bengt Holmstrom, 1979. "Moral Hazard and Observability," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 10(1), pages 74-91, Spring.
    18. Rajesh K. Aggarwal & Andrew A. Samwick, 1999. "The Other Side of the Trade-off: The Impact of Risk on Executive Compensation," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 107(1), pages 65-105, February.
    19. Jensen, Michael C. & Meckling, William H., 1976. "Theory of the firm: Managerial behavior, agency costs and ownership structure," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 3(4), pages 305-360, October.
    20. Francis, Bill & Hasan, Iftekhar & John, Kose & Sharma, Zenu, 2013. "Asymmetric benchmarking of pay in firms," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 23(C), pages 39-53.
    21. Edward I. Altman, 1968. "Financial Ratios, Discriminant Analysis And The Prediction Of Corporate Bankruptcy," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 23(4), pages 589-609, September.
    22. Core, John E. & Holthausen, Robert W. & Larcker, David F., 1999. "Corporate governance, chief executive officer compensation, and firm performance," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 51(3), pages 371-406, March.
    23. David L. Dicks, 2012. "Executive Compensation and the Role for Corporate Governance Regulation," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 25(6), pages 1971-2004.
    24. Garvey, Gerald T. & Milbourn, Todd T., 2006. "Asymmetric benchmarking in compensation: Executives are rewarded for good luck but not penalized for bad," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 82(1), pages 197-225, October.
    25. Lucian Bebchuk & Alma Cohen & Allen Ferrell, 2009. "What Matters in Corporate Governance?," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 22(2), pages 783-827, February.
    26. Xavier Giroud & Holger M. Mueller, 2011. "Corporate Governance, Product Market Competition, and Equity Prices," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 66(2), pages 563-600, April.
    27. Jiraporn, Pornsit & Kim, Young Sang & Davidson, Wallace N. & Singh, Manohar, 2006. "Corporate governance, shareholder rights and firm diversification: An empirical analysis," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 30(3), pages 947-963, March.
    28. John R. Graham & Si Li & Jiaping Qiu, 2011. "Managerial Attributes and Executive Compensation," NBER Working Papers 17368, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    29. Shane A. Johnson & Theodore C. Moorman & Sorin Sorescu, 2009. "A Reexamination of Corporate Governance and Equity Prices," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 22(11), pages 4753-4786, November.
    30. Dalida Kadyrzhanova & Matthew Rhodes‐Kropf, 2011. "Concentrating on Governance," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 66(5), pages 1649-1685, October.
    31. Radhakrishnan Gopalan & Todd Milbourn & Fenghua Song, 2010. "Strategic Flexibility and the Optimality of Pay for Sector Performance," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 23(5), pages 2060-2098.
    32. Harris, Milton & Raviv, Artur, 1979. "Optimal incentive contracts with imperfect information," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 20(2), pages 231-259, April.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Lucas W. Davis and Catherine Hausman, 2020. "Are Energy Executives Rewarded for Luck?," The Energy Journal, International Association for Energy Economics, vol. 0(Number 6), pages 157-180.
    2. Yixi Ning & Jun Yang & Yuan Wang, 2024. "The long-term impact of CEO compensation structure on CEO pay for luck and asymmetry," Journal of Economics and Finance, Springer;Academy of Economics and Finance, vol. 48(3), pages 834-856, September.
    3. Amore, Mario Daniele & Schwenen, Sebastian, 2020. "The Value of Luck in the Labor Market for CEOs," CEPR Discussion Papers 14839, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    4. Clement Olalekan Olaniyi & Olaolu Richard Olayeni, 2020. "A new perspective into the relationship between CEO pay and firm performance: evidence from Nigeria’s listed firms," Journal of Social and Economic Development, Springer;Institute for Social and Economic Change, vol. 22(2), pages 250-277, December.
    5. Mehtap A. Eklund, 2024. "CEO compensation and market risk: moderating effect of board size and CEO duality in the Swiss context," International Journal of Disclosure and Governance, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 21(2), pages 227-240, June.
    6. Michael Haylock, 2022. "Distributional differences in the time horizon of executive compensation," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 62(1), pages 157-186, January.
    7. Reza, Syed Walid, 2020. "Profit skimming, asymmetric benchmarking, or the effects of implicit incentives? Evidence from natural disasters," Journal of Multinational Financial Management, Elsevier, vol. 57.
    8. Anthony J. Vine, 2016. "Using Pythagorean Expectation to Determine Luck in the KFC Big Bash League," Economic Papers, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 35(3), pages 269-281, September.
    9. Haylock, Michael, 2020. "Executives' short-term and long-term incentives - a distributional analysis," University of Tübingen Working Papers in Business and Economics 131, University of Tuebingen, Faculty of Economics and Social Sciences, School of Business and Economics.
    10. Shang, Xiaodan & Luo, Chuanjian & Wen, Qian, 2020. "Do Chinese executives reward for luck?," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 92(C), pages 318-325.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Hongfei Tang, 2014. "Are CEO stock option grants optimal? Evidence from family firms and non-family firms around the Sarbanes–Oxley Act," Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, Springer, vol. 42(2), pages 251-292, February.
    2. Liu, Cai & Yin, Chao, 2023. "Institutional investors’ monitoring attention, CEO compensation, and relative performance evaluation," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 56(C).
    3. Francis, Bill & Hasan, Iftekhar & John, Kose & Sharma, Zenu, 2013. "Asymmetric benchmarking of pay in firms," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 23(C), pages 39-53.
    4. Na, Ke, 2020. "CEOs’ outside opportunities and relative performance evaluation: evidence from a natural experiment," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 137(3), pages 679-700.
    5. Edmans, Alex & Gosling, Tom & Jenter, Dirk, 2023. "CEO compensation: Evidence from the field," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 150(3).
    6. Liu, Yun & Nanda, Vikram & Onal, Bunyamin & Silveri, Sabatino, 2021. "Employment mobility and pay for sector performance," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 70(C).
    7. Alex Edmans & Xavier Gabaix, 2016. "Executive Compensation: A Modern Primer," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 54(4), pages 1232-1287, December.
    8. Kini, Omesh & Williams, Ryan, 2012. "Tournament incentives, firm risk, and corporate policies," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 103(2), pages 350-376.
    9. Stacey Beaumont & Raluca Ratiu & David Reeb & Glenn Boyle & Philip Brown & Alexander Szimayer & Raymond Silva Rosa & David Hillier & Patrick McColgan & Athanasios Tsekeris & Bryan Howieson & Zoltan Ma, 2016. "Comments on Shan and Walter: ‘Towards a Set of Design Principles for Executive Compensation Contracts’," Abacus, Accounting Foundation, University of Sydney, vol. 52(4), pages 685-771, December.
    10. Eduard Marinov, 2016. "The 2016 Nobel Prize in Economics," Economic Thought journal, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences - Economic Research Institute, issue 6, pages 97-149.
    11. Goergen, Marc & Manjon, Miguel C. & Renneboog, Luc, 2008. "Recent developments in German corporate governance," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 28(3), pages 175-193, September.
    12. Brookman, Jeffrey T. & Thistle, Paul D., 2013. "Managerial compensation: Luck, skill or labor markets?," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 21(C), pages 252-268.
    13. Waisman, Maya, 2013. "Product market competition and the cost of bank loans: Evidence from state antitakeover laws," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 37(12), pages 4721-4737.
    14. Chan, Chia-Ying & Chou, De-Wai & Lin, Jane-Raung & Liu, Feng-Ying, 2016. "The role of corporate governance in forecasting bankruptcy: Pre- and post-SOX enactment," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 35(C), pages 166-188.
    15. Drobetz, Wolfgang & von Meyerinck, Felix & Oesch, David & Schmid, Markus, 2014. "Board Industry Experience, Firm Value, and Investment Behavior," Working Papers on Finance 1401, University of St. Gallen, School of Finance, revised Dec 2015.
    16. Pierre Chaigneau & Nicolas Sahuguet, "undated". "The structure of CEO pay: pay-for-luck and stock-options," FMG Discussion Papers dp713, Financial Markets Group.
    17. Oh, Frederick Dongchuhl & Shin, Sean Seunghun, 2020. "Does product market competition affect corporate governance? Evidence from corporate takeovers," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 59(C), pages 68-87.
    18. Fortin, Steve & Subramaniam, Chandra & Wang, Xu (Frank) & Zhang, Sanjian (Bill), 2014. "Incentive alignment through performance-focused shareholder proposals on management compensation," Journal of Contemporary Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 10(2), pages 130-147.
    19. Gao, Huasheng & Li, Kai, 2015. "A comparison of CEO pay–performance sensitivity in privately-held and public firms," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 35(C), pages 370-388.
    20. Reza, Syed Walid, 2020. "Profit skimming, asymmetric benchmarking, or the effects of implicit incentives? Evidence from natural disasters," Journal of Multinational Financial Management, Elsevier, vol. 57.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Executive compensation; Pay-for-luck; Pay asymmetry; Executive retention; Governance;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • G34 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance - - - Mergers; Acquisitions; Restructuring; Corporate Governance

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:corfin:v:35:y:2015:i:c:p:247-264. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/jcorpfin .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.