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Influential independent directors' reputation incentives: Impacts on CEO compensation contracts and financial reporting

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  • Masulis, Ronald W.
  • Mobbs, Shawn

Abstract

We study how reputation incentives of influential independent directors (those holding multiple directorships) affect CEO compensation and firm financial reporting decisions. We find that CEO equity-based incentives, measured by CEO delta, vega and the number of equity grants are positively related to these directors' reputation incentives. These director reputation incentives also mitigate the perverse CEO incentives to inflate earnings, which arise from such high-powered compensation structures, by motivating increased board monitoring to limit discretionary accruals and real activity-based earnings management. These findings are invariant to endogeneity adjustments under multiple approaches, including exogenous changes in reputation incentives.

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  • Masulis, Ronald W. & Mobbs, Shawn, 2023. "Influential independent directors' reputation incentives: Impacts on CEO compensation contracts and financial reporting," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 82(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:corfin:v:82:y:2023:i:c:s0929119923000986
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jcorpfin.2023.102449
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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Independent directors; Reputation incentives; CEO compensation; Earnings management;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • G30 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance - - - General
    • G32 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance - - - Financing Policy; Financial Risk and Risk Management; Capital and Ownership Structure; Value of Firms; Goodwill
    • G34 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance - - - Mergers; Acquisitions; Restructuring; Corporate Governance

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