T is considerable debate on executive compensation in both the public arena and academia. This debate spans several important topics in economics, such as contract theory, corporate finance, corporate governance, labor economics, and income inequality. One side is the “rent extraction” view, which claims that current compensation practices sharply contrast the predictions of traditional agency ...

Conventional wisdom suggests that CEO membership of the compensation committee is an open invitation to rent extraction by self-serving executives. However, using data from New Zealand – where CEO compensation committee membership is relatively common – we find that annual pay increments for CEOs with this apparent advantage averaged six percentage points less than those enjoyed by other CEOs d...

Executives use market labels to position their firms within market categories. Yet this activity has been given scarce attention in the extant literature that widely assumes that market labels are simple, prescribed classification brackets that accurately represent firms’ characteristics. By examining how and why executives use the nanotechnology label, we uncover three strategies: claiming, di...

This paper finds that globalization is contributing to the rapid increase in executive compensation. Employing comprehensive data on top executives at major U.S. companies, we show their compensation increasing with exports and foreign direct investment, as well firm size technology. Exogenous export shocks unrelated managerial decisions also compensation, there little evidence this due market ...