IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/applec/v52y2020i7p671-693.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The asymmetric role of corporate governance in CEO pay determination: evidence from South Africa

Author

Listed:
  • Ernest Gyapong
  • Maithm M. R. Khaghaany
  • Ammad Ahmed

Abstract

Previous studies suggest that CEOs may be incentivised to pursue actions aimed at restoring equity when pay deviates from the predicted CEO labour market compensation rate. This study investigates the effect of corporate governance (CG) quality on CEO pay deviation in an emerging economy characterised by weaker external corporate regulatory environment. Using a unique hand-collected data of 185 South African listed firms over a six-year period, We document that whereas CG quality impacts negatively on total CEO pay deviation, this is only conspicuous when the CEO is overpaid. CG quality has no effect on CEO compensation when the CEO is underpaid. We find that CEO underpayment reduces firm value in poorly-governed firms. In contrast, CEO overpayment has no effect on firm value irrespective of the level of CG quality. The findings imply that recent CEO pay level agitations have resulted in the design of CG mechanisms that reduces the tendency of CEO pay to adjust upwards. The results are robust to alternative econometric techniques and endogeneity concerns.

Suggested Citation

  • Ernest Gyapong & Maithm M. R. Khaghaany & Ammad Ahmed, 2020. "The asymmetric role of corporate governance in CEO pay determination: evidence from South Africa," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 52(7), pages 671-693, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:applec:v:52:y:2020:i:7:p:671-693
    DOI: 10.1080/00036846.2019.1645280
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/00036846.2019.1645280
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/00036846.2019.1645280?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.

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Vincent Tawiah & Ernest Gyapong, 2023. "International financial reporting standards, domestic debt finance and institutional quality: Evidence from developing countries," International Journal of Finance & Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 28(3), pages 2915-2936, July.
    2. 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.
    3. Clement Olalekan Olaniyi & Ademola Obafemi Young & Xuan Vinh Vo & Mamdouh Abdulaziz Saleh Al‐Faryan, 2022. "Do institutional framework and its threshold matter in the sensitivity of CEO pay to firm performance? Fresh insights from an emerging market economy," Managerial and Decision Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 43(8), pages 3386-3403, December.

    More about this item

    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:taf:applec:v:52:y:2020:i:7:p:671-693. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/RAEC20 .

    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.