This paper considers optimal compensation for a CEO who is entrusted with administering corporate assets honestly. Optimal compensation designs maximize integrity at minimum cost. These designs are very ‘low powered,’ i.e., while specifying a lower bound for performance and increasing pay with performance, they increase compensation at a rapidly decreasing rate. Thus, integrity considerations engender optimal compensation packages that closely resemble the very pervasive 80/120 bonus plans, exactly the sort of compensation which Jensen (2003) argues should compromise integrity. Under optimal designs, expected compensation increases linearly with firm size, and increases in the market/book ratio. Moreover, given optimal compensation, CEO asset diversion is limited to high market-to-book firms that have received negative productivity shocks.
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Paper provided by Oxford Financial Research Centre in its series OFRC Working Papers Series with number
2008fe13.
Cited by: (explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.)
Paul Povel & Rajdeep Singh & Andrew Winton, 2003.
"Booms, Busts, and Fraud,"
Finance
0312007, EconWPA.
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Other versions:
Paul Povel & Rajdeep Singh & Andrew Winton, 2007.
"Booms, Busts, and Fraud,"
Review of Financial Studies,
Oxford University Press for Society for Financial Studies, vol. 20(4), pages 1219-1254.
[Downloadable!] (restricted)