IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/reaccs/v25y2020i4d10.1007_s11142-020-09540-1.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Does it pay to ‘Be Like Mike’? Aspiratonal peer firms and relative performance evaluation

Author

Listed:
  • Ryan T. Ball

    (University of Michigan)

  • Jonathan Bonham

    (University of Chicago)

  • Thomas Hemmer

    (Rice University)

Abstract

We examine the manner and extent to which firms evaluate performance relative to aspirational peer firms. Guided by the predictions of an agency model, we find that CEO compensation increases in the correlation between own and aspirational peer firm performances. In addition, we define and test conditions where aggregate peer performance, which has been the primary focus of prior relative performance evaluation studies of competitive peers, is expected to have an association with CEO compensation. These conditions are supported by our empirical results. Finally, we document that our results are more pronounced when the firm-peer relationship is one-way and the peer firm is in a different industry and therefore is more aspirational.

Suggested Citation

  • Ryan T. Ball & Jonathan Bonham & Thomas Hemmer, 2020. "Does it pay to ‘Be Like Mike’? Aspiratonal peer firms and relative performance evaluation," Review of Accounting Studies, Springer, vol. 25(4), pages 1507-1541, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:reaccs:v:25:y:2020:i:4:d:10.1007_s11142-020-09540-1
    DOI: 10.1007/s11142-020-09540-1
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11142-020-09540-1
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s11142-020-09540-1?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. Barro, Jason R & Barro, Robert J, 1990. "Pay, Performance, and Turnover of Bank CEOs," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 8(4), pages 448-481, October.
    2. Smith, Clifford Jr. & Watts, Ross L., 1992. "The investment opportunity set and corporate financing, dividend, and compensation policies," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 32(3), pages 263-292, December.
    3. 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.
    4. Jewitt, Ian, 1988. "Justifying the First-Order Approach to Principal-Agent Problems," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 56(5), pages 1177-1190, September.
    5. Albuquerque, Ana, 2009. "Peer firms in relative performance evaluation," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 48(1), pages 69-89, October.
    6. Ghysels, Eric & Santa-Clara, Pedro & Valkanov, Rossen, 2005. "There is a risk-return trade-off after all," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 76(3), pages 509-548, June.
    7. Dirk Jenter & Fadi Kanaan, 2015. "CEO Turnover and Relative Performance Evaluation," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 70(5), pages 2155-2184, October.
    8. Rajesh K. Aggarwal & Andrew A. Samwick, 1999. "Executive Compensation, Strategic Competition, and Relative Performance Evaluation: Theory and Evidence," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 54(6), pages 1999-2043, December.
    9. Robert Gibbons & Kevin J. Murphy, 1990. "Relative Performance Evaluation for Chief Executive Officers," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 43(3), pages 30, April.
    10. 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.
    11. Jensen, Michael C & Murphy, Kevin J, 1990. "Performance Pay and Top-Management Incentives," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 98(2), pages 225-264, April.
    12. 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.
    13. Ryan T. Ball & Lindsey Gallo & Eric Ghysels, 2019. "Tilting the evidence: the role of firm-level earnings attributes in the relation between aggregated earnings and gross domestic product," Review of Accounting Studies, Springer, vol. 24(2), pages 570-592, June.
    14. Core, John & Guay, Wayne, 1999. "The use of equity grants to manage optimal equity incentive levels," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 28(2), pages 151-184, December.
    15. Holmstrom, Bengt & Milgrom, Paul, 1987. "Aggregation and Linearity in the Provision of Intertemporal Incentives," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 55(2), pages 303-328, March.
    16. Shivaram Rajgopal & Terry Shevlin & Valentina Zamora, 2006. "CEOs' Outside Employment Opportunities and the Lack of Relative Performance Evaluation in Compensation Contracts," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 61(4), pages 1813-1844, August.
    17. Antle, R & Smith, A, 1986. "An Empirical-Investigation Of The Relative Performance Evaluation Of Corporate-Executives," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 24(1), pages 1-39.
    18. Sherwin Rosen, 1982. "Authority, Control, and the Distribution of Earnings," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 13(2), pages 311-323, Autumn.
    19. Bearden, William O & Etzel, Michael J, 1982. "Reference Group Influence on Product and Brand Purchase Decisions," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 9(2), pages 183-194, September.
    20. Janakiraman, Sn & Lambert, Ra & Larcker, Df, 1992. "An Empirical-Investigation Of The Relative Performance Evaluation Hypothesis," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 30(1), pages 53-69.
    21. 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.
    22. Gerald Garvey & Todd Milbourn, 2003. "Incentive Compensation When Executives Can Hedge the Market: Evidence of Relative Performance Evaluation in the Cross Section," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 58(4), pages 1557-1582, August.
    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. Karpoff, Jonathan M., 2023. "Unlikely sabotage: Comment on Bloomfield, Marvão, and Spagnolo," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 76(2).

    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. Albuquerque, Ana, 2009. "Peer firms in relative performance evaluation," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 48(1), pages 69-89, October.
    2. 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.
    3. Miguel Antón & Florian Ederer & Mireia Giné & Martin Schmalz, 2023. "Common Ownership, Competition, and Top Management Incentives," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 131(5), pages 1294-1355.
    4. Dragan Ilić & Sonja Pisarov & Peter S. Schmidt, 2019. "Preaching water but drinking wine? Relative performance evaluation in international banking," Swiss Journal of Economics and Statistics, Springer;Swiss Society of Economics and Statistics, vol. 155(1), pages 1-25, December.
    5. Carlos Jiménez-Angueira & Nathan Stuart, 2015. "Relative performance evaluation, pay-for-luck, and double-dipping in CEO compensation," Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, Springer, vol. 44(4), pages 701-732, May.
    6. Carola Frydman & Dirk Jenter, 2010. "CEO Compensation," Annual Review of Financial Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 2(1), pages 75-102, December.
    7. An, Suwei, 2023. "Essays on incentive contracts, M&As, and firm risk," Other publications TiSEM dd97d2f5-1c9d-47c5-ba62-f, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    8. Dirk Jenter & Fadi Kanaan, 2015. "CEO Turnover and Relative Performance Evaluation," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 70(5), pages 2155-2184, October.
    9. Kaniel, Ron & DeMarzo, Peter, 2016. "Relative Pay for Non-Relative Performance: Keeping up with the Joneses with Optimal Contracts," CEPR Discussion Papers 11538, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    10. Bushman, Robert M. & Smith, Abbie J., 2001. "Financial accounting information and corporate governance," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 32(1-3), pages 237-333, December.
    11. Sun, Yang & Zhao, Wei, 2024. "Relative performance evaluation in spillover networks," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 145(C), pages 285-311.
    12. Ili, Dragan & Pisarov, Sonja & Schmidt, Peter S., 2015. "Preaching Water But Drinking Wine? Relative Performance Evaluation in International Banking," Working papers 2015/10, Faculty of Business and Economics - University of Basel.
    13. Alex Edmans & Xavier Gabaix, 2016. "Executive Compensation: A Modern Primer," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 54(4), pages 1232-1287, December.
    14. Dragan Ilić & Sonja Pisarov & Peter S. Schmidt, 2015. "Preaching water but drinking wine? Relative performance evaluation in international banking," ECON - Working Papers 208, Department of Economics - University of Zurich, revised Aug 2016.
    15. Kim, Kyonghee, 2010. "Blockholder monitoring and the efficiency of pay-performance benchmarking," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 16(5), pages 748-766, December.
    16. repec:eee:labchp:v:3:y:1999:i:pb:p:2485-2563 is not listed on IDEAS
    17. Hill, Mary S. & Lopez, Thomas J. & Reitenga, Austin L., 2016. "CEO excess compensation: The impact of firm size and managerial power," Advances in accounting, Elsevier, vol. 33(C), pages 35-46.
    18. Taye Mengistae & Lixin Colin Xu, 2004. "Agency Theory and Executive Compensation: The Case of Chinese State-Owned Enterprises," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 22(3), pages 615-638, July.
    19. Nanda, Vikram & Onal, Bunyamin, 2016. "Incentive contracting when boards have related industry expertise," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 41(C), pages 1-22.
    20. Brian Bell & Simone Pedemonte & John Van Reenen, 2021. "Ceo Pay and the Rise of Relative Performance Contracts: A Question of Governance?," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 19(5), pages 2513-2542.
    21. Johnson, Shane A. & Tian, Yisong S., 2000. "Indexed executive stock options," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 57(1), pages 35-64, July.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Performance correlation; Relative performance evaluation; Aspirational peers;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • G30 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance - - - General
    • M12 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Business Administration - - - Personnel Management; Executives; Executive Compensation
    • M52 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Personnel Economics - - - Compensation and Compensation Methods and Their Effects

    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:spr:reaccs:v:25:y:2020:i:4:d:10.1007_s11142-020-09540-1. 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: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    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.