bonus

Abstract

Who sets CEO pay? Our standard answer to this question has been shaped by principal agent theory:
shareholders set CEO pay. They use pay to limit the moral hazard problem caused by the low ownership
stakes of CEOs. Through bonuses, options, or long term contracts, shareholders can motivate the CEO to
maximize firm wealth. In other words, shareholders use pay to provide incentives, a view we refer to as the
contracting view.
An alternative view, championed by practitioners such as Crystal (1991), argues that CEOs set their
own pay. They manipulate the compensation committee and hence the pay process itself to pay themselves
what they can. The only constraints they face may be the availability of funds or more general fears, such
as not wanting to be singled out in the Wall Street Journal as being overpaid. We refer to this second view
as the skimming view. In this paper, we investigate the relevance of these two views.

Year of Publication
2000
Number
430
Date Published
02/2000
Publication Language
eng
Citation Key
The American Economic Review, Vol. 90, No. 2, Papers and Proceedings of the One Hundred Twelfth Annual Meeting of the American Economic Associatio, May, 2000
Bertrand, M., & Mullainathan, S. (2000). Agents with and without Principals. Retrieved from http://arks.princeton.edu/ark:/88435/dsp010v8380572 (Original work published February 2000)
Working Papers