IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/15987.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Risk and the CEO Market: Why Do Some Large Firms Hire Highly-Paid, Low-Talent CEOs?

Author

Listed:
  • Alex Edmans
  • Xavier Gabaix

Abstract

This paper presents a market equilibrium model of CEO assignment, pay and incentives under risk aversion and heterogeneous moral hazard. Each of the three outcomes can be summarized by a single closed-form equation. In assignment models without moral hazard, allocation depends only on firm size and the equilibrium is efficient. Here, talent assignment is distorted by the agency problem as firms involving higher risk or disutility choose less talented CEOs. Such firms also pay higher salaries in the cross-section, but economy-wide increases in risk or the disutility of being a CEO (e.g. due to regulation) do not affect pay. The strength of incentives depends only on the disutility of effort and is independent of risk and risk aversion. If the CEO affects the volatility as well as mean of firm returns, incentives rise and are increasing in risk and risk aversion. We calibrate the efficiency losses from various forms of poor corporate governance, such as failures in monitoring and inefficiencies in CEO assignment. The losses from misallocation of talent are orders of magnitude higher than from inefficient risk-sharing.

Suggested Citation

  • Alex Edmans & Xavier Gabaix, 2010. "Risk and the CEO Market: Why Do Some Large Firms Hire Highly-Paid, Low-Talent CEOs?," NBER Working Papers 15987, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:15987
    Note: CF LS
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w15987.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Eisfeldt, Andrea L. & Kuhnen, Camelia M., 2013. "CEO turnover in a competitive assignment framework," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 109(2), pages 351-372.
    2. Ittner, Christopher D. & Lambert, Richard A. & Larcker, David F., 2003. "The structure and performance consequences of equity grants to employees of new economy firms," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 34(1-3), pages 89-127, January.
    3. Alex Edmans & Xavier Gabaix, 2011. "Tractability in Incentive Contracting," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 24(9), pages 2865-2894.
    4. Xavier Gabaix & Augustin Landier, 2008. "Why has CEO Pay Increased So Much?," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 123(1), pages 49-100.
    5. Bruno Biais & Thomas Mariotti & Guillaume Plantin & Jean-Charles Rochet, 2007. "Dynamic Security Design: Convergence to Continuous Time and Asset Pricing Implications," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 74(2), pages 345-390.
    6. Marko Tervio, 2008. "The Difference That CEOs Make: An Assignment Model Approach," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 98(3), pages 642-668, June.
    7. Oyer, Paul & Schaefer, Scott, 2005. "Why do some firms give stock options to all employees?: An empirical examination of alternative theories," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 76(1), pages 99-133, April.
    8. Ingolf Dittmann & Ernst Maug, 2007. "Lower Salaries and No Options? On the Optimal Structure of Executive Pay," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 62(1), pages 303-343, February.
    9. Richard A. Lambert, 1986. "Executive Effort and Selection of Risky Projects," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 17(1), pages 77-88, Spring.
    10. Oriana Bandiera & Luigi Guiso & Andrea Prat & Raffaella Sadun, 2015. "Matching Firms, Managers, and Incentives," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 33(3), pages 623-681.
    11. Peter M. DeMarzo & Michael J. Fishman, 2007. "Optimal Long-Term Financial Contracting," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 20(6), pages 2079-2128, November.
    12. Guillaume Plantin & Bruno Biais & Thomas Mariotti & Jean-Charles Rochet, 2004. "Dynamic Security Design," GSIA Working Papers 2005-E5, Carnegie Mellon University, Tepper School of Business.
    13. Pol Antràs & Luis Garicano & Esteban Rossi-Hansberg, 2006. "Offshoring in a Knowledge Economy," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 121(1), pages 31-77.
    14. Ingolf Dittmann & Ko-Chia Yu & Dan Zhang, 2017. "How Important Are Risk-Taking Incentives in Executive Compensation?," Review of Finance, European Finance Association, vol. 21(5), pages 1805-1846.
    15. George-Levi Gayle & Robert A. Miller, 2009. "Has Moral Hazard Become a More Important Factor in Managerial Compensation?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 99(5), pages 1740-1769, December.
    16. Florian S. Peters & Alexander F. Wagner, 2014. "The Executive Turnover Risk Premium," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 69(4), pages 1529-1563, August.
    17. Demsetz, Harold & Lehn, Kenneth, 1985. "The Structure of Corporate Ownership: Causes and Consequences," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 93(6), pages 1155-1177, December.
    18. Baker, George P, 1992. "Incentive Contracts and Performance Measurement," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 100(3), pages 598-614, June.
    19. Gibbons, Robert & Murphy, Kevin J, 1992. "Optimal Incentive Contracts in the Presence of Career Concerns: Theory and Evidence," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 100(3), pages 468-505, June.
    20. Brian J. Hall & Jeffrey B. Liebman, 1998. "Are CEOs Really Paid Like Bureaucrats?," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 113(3), pages 653-691.
    21. 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.
    22. Alfred Galichon & Bernard Salanié, 2010. "Matching with Trade-offs: Revealed Preferences over Competiting Characteristics," Working Papers hal-00473173, HAL.
    23. Holmstrom, Bengt & Milgrom, Paul, 1987. "Aggregation and Linearity in the Provision of Intertemporal Incentives," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 55(2), pages 303-328, March.
    24. Sappington, David, 1983. "Limited liability contracts between principal and agent," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 29(1), pages 1-21, February.
    25. Fabienne Llense, 2010. "French CEOs' Compensations: What is the Cost of a Mandatory Upper Limit?," CESifo Economic Studies, CESifo Group, vol. 56(2), pages 165-191, June.
    26. Ulrike Malmendier & Geoffrey Tate, 2009. "Superstar CEOs," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 124(4), pages 1593-1638.
    27. Sattinger, Michael, 1993. "Assignment Models of the Distribution of Earnings," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 31(2), pages 831-880, June.
    28. Murphy, Kevin J., 2003. "Stock-based pay in new economy firms," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 34(1-3), pages 129-147, January.
    29. O. Ashenfelter & D. Card (ed.), 1999. "Handbook of Labor Economics," Handbook of Labor Economics, Elsevier, edition 1, volume 3, number 3.
    30. Kihlstrom, Richard E & Laffont, Jean-Jacques, 1979. "A General Equilibrium Entrepreneurial Theory of Firm Formation Based on Risk Aversion," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 87(4), pages 719-748, August.
    31. Kunio Tsuyuhara, 2009. "Repeated Moral Hazard with Worker Mobility via Directed On-the-Job Search," 2009 Meeting Papers 512, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    32. Yuk Ying Chang & Sudipto Dasgupta & Gilles Hilary, 2010. "CEO Ability, Pay, and Firm Performance," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 56(10), pages 1633-1652, October.
    33. Garen, John E, 1994. "Executive Compensation and Principal-Agent Theory," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 102(6), pages 1175-1199, December.
    34. Jaeyoung Sung, 1995. "Linearity with Project Selection and Controllable Diffusion Rate in Continuous-Time Principal-Agent Problems," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 26(4), pages 720-743, Winter.
    35. Benjamin E. Hermalin, 2005. "Trends in Corporate Governance," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 60(5), pages 2351-2384, October.
    36. Hui Ou-Yang, 2003. "Optimal Contracts in a Continuous-Time Delegated Portfolio Management Problem," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 16(1), pages 173-208.
    37. Alex Edmans & Xavier Gabaix & Augustin Landier, 2009. "A Multiplicative Model of Optimal CEO Incentives in Market Equilibrium," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 22(12), pages 4881-4917, December.
    38. 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. Dittmann, Ingolf & Maug, Ernst & Zhang, Dan, 2011. "Restricting CEO pay," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 17(4), pages 1200-1220, September.
    2. Oriana Bandiera & Luigi Guiso & Andrea Prat & Raffaella Sadun, 2015. "Matching Firms, Managers, and Incentives," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 33(3), pages 623-681.
    3. Jacek Rothert, 2015. "Monitoring, moral hazard, and turnover," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 58(2), pages 355-374, February.

    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. Alex Edmans & Xavier Gabaix, 2016. "Executive Compensation: A Modern Primer," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 54(4), pages 1232-1287, December.
    2. Gabaix, Xavier & Sannikov, Yuliy & Edmans, Alex & Sadzik, Tomasz, 2009. "Dynamic Incentive Accounts," CEPR Discussion Papers 7497, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    3. Alex Edmans & Xavier Gabaix & Augustin Landier, 2007. "A Calibratable Model of Optimal CEO Incentives in Market Equilibrium," NBER Working Papers 13372, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Page, T. Beau, 2018. "CEO attributes, compensation, and firm value: Evidence from a structural estimation," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 128(2), pages 378-401.
    5. Zhiguo He & Si Li & Bin Wei & Jianfeng Yu, 2014. "Uncertainty, Risk, and Incentives: Theory and Evidence," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 60(1), pages 206-226, January.
    6. Alex Edmans & Xavier Gabaix, 2011. "Tractability in Incentive Contracting," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 24(9), pages 2865-2894.
    7. repec:oup:rfinst:v:21:y:2017:i:5:p:1805-1846. is not listed on IDEAS
    8. Chaigneau, Pierre & Sahuguet, Nicolas, 2013. "The effect of monitoring on CEO pay practices in a matching equilibrium," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 55405, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    9. Zhiguo He & Bin Wei & Jianfeng Yu & Feng Gao, 2017. "Optimal Long-Term Contracting with Learning," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 30(6), pages 2006-2065.
    10. Ingolf Dittmann & Ko-Chia Yu & Dan Zhang, 2017. "How Important Are Risk-Taking Incentives in Executive Compensation?," Review of Finance, European Finance Association, vol. 21(5), pages 1805-1846.
    11. Carola Frydman & Dirk Jenter, 2010. "CEO Compensation," Annual Review of Financial Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 2(1), pages 75-102, December.
    12. Giannetti, Mariassunta, 2011. "Serial CEO incentives and the structure of managerial contracts," Journal of Financial Intermediation, Elsevier, vol. 20(4), pages 633-662, October.
    13. Stanimir Morfov & Manuel Santos, 2017. "A Model of Managerial Talent: Addressing Some Puzzles in CEO Compensation," Working Papers 2017-03, University of Miami, Department of Economics.
    14. Jenter, Dirk & Cziraki, Peter, 2021. "The Market for CEOs," CEPR Discussion Papers 16281, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    15. Yoon K. Choi, 2020. "Does executive compensation reflect corporate productivity?," Journal of Business Finance & Accounting, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 47(7-8), pages 1012-1033, July.
    16. Kelly Shue & Richard Townsend, 2016. "Growth through Rigidity: An Explanation for the Rise in CEO Pay," NBER Working Papers 21975, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    17. Yanhui Wu, 2011. "A Simple Theory of Managerial Talent, Pay Contracts and Wage Distribution," CEP Discussion Papers dp1067, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE.
    18. Röell, Ailsa & Peng, Lin & Tang, Hongfei, 2016. "CEO Incentives: Measurement, Determinants, and Impact on Performance," CEPR Discussion Papers 11417, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    19. Pierre Chaigneau & Nicolas Sahuguet, 2014. "Explaining the Association between Monitoring and Controversial CEO Pay Practices: an Optimal Contracting Perspective," Cahiers de recherche 1406, CIRPEE.
    20. Xavier Gabaix & Augustin Landier, 2008. "Why has CEO Pay Increased So Much?," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 123(1), pages 49-100.
    21. Xavier Gabaix & Augustin Landier & Julien Sauvagnat, 2014. "CEO Pay and Firm Size: An Update After the Crisis," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 124(574), pages 40-59, February.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • G3 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance
    • J01 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - General - - - Labor Economics: General

    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:nbr:nberwo:15987. 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

    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.