IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/rcorpf/v12y2023i4p939-985..html
   My bibliography  Save this article

ESG-Linked Compensation, CEO Skills, and Shareholder Welfare

Author

Listed:
  • Swarnodeep Homroy
  • Taylan Mavruk
  • Van Diem Nguyen

Abstract

Executive compensation is increasingly being linked to ESG outcomes. This paper examines whether ESG targets are consistent with shareholder welfare. Using granular information on compensation contracts of Swedish CEOs, we show that ESG and financial targets are competing. ESG-linked compensation is 5 percentage points more common in well-governed firms and 6.3 percentage points more likely for CEOs with broader skill sets (generalist CEOs). ESG scores of well-governed firms improve when generalist CEOs have ESG-linked pay, but there is no effect on profitability. These results suggest that boards set ESG contracts because shareholders derive utility from ESG in addition to wealth, and ESG may not be produced without these incentives. (JEL M14, G14, D21, L21)Authors have furnished an Internet Appendix, which is available on the Oxford University Press Web site next to the link to the final published paper online.

Suggested Citation

  • Swarnodeep Homroy & Taylan Mavruk & Van Diem Nguyen, 2023. "ESG-Linked Compensation, CEO Skills, and Shareholder Welfare," The Review of Corporate Finance Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 12(4), pages 939-985.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:rcorpf:v:12:y:2023:i:4:p:939-985.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/rcfs/cfad012
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • M14 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Business Administration - - - Corporate Culture; Diversity; Social Responsibility
    • G14 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Information and Market Efficiency; Event Studies; Insider Trading
    • D21 - Microeconomics - - Production and Organizations - - - Firm Behavior: Theory
    • L21 - Industrial Organization - - Firm Objectives, Organization, and Behavior - - - Business Objectives of the Firm

    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:oup:rcorpf:v:12:y:2023:i:4:p:939-985.. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://academic.oup.com/rcfs .

    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.