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.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Scott R. Baker & Nicholas Bloom & Steven J. Davis, 2016. "Measuring Economic Policy Uncertainty," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 131(4), pages 1593-1636.
    2. Franklin Allen & Elena Carletti & Robert Marquez, 2015. "Stakeholder Governance, Competition, and Firm Value," Review of Finance, European Finance Association, vol. 19(3), pages 1315-1346.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Croce, M.M. & Nguyen, Thien T. & Raymond, S. & Schmid, L., 2019. "Government debt and the returns to innovation," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 132(3), pages 205-225.
    2. Nikolay Hristov & Markus Roth, 2019. "Uncertainty Shocks and Financial Crisis Indicators," CESifo Working Paper Series 7839, CESifo.
    3. Deshuai Hou & Luhan Shi & Hong He & Jian Xiong, 2023. "Research on the Deviation of Corporate Green Behaviour under Economic Policy Uncertainty Based on the Perspective of Green Technology Innovation in Chinese Listed Companies," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(9), pages 1-27, May.
    4. Manfred M. Fischer & Florian Huber & Michael Pfarrhofer, 2018. "The transmission of uncertainty shocks on income inequality: State-level evidence from the United States," Papers 1806.08278, arXiv.org.
    5. Idriss Fontaine, 2021. "Uncertainty and Labour Force Participation," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 83(2), pages 437-471, April.
    6. Müller, Karsten, 2020. "German forecasters' narratives: How informative are German business cycle forecast reports?," Working Papers 23, German Research Foundation's Priority Programme 1859 "Experience and Expectation. Historical Foundations of Economic Behaviour", Humboldt University Berlin.
    7. Salzmann, Leonard, 2020. "The Impact of Uncertainty and Financial Shocks in Recessions and Booms," VfS Annual Conference 2020 (Virtual Conference): Gender Economics 224588, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    8. Yingce Yang & Junjie Guo & Ruihong He, 2023. "The Asymmetric Impact of the Oil Price and Disaggregate Shocks on Economic Policy Uncertainty: Evidence From China," SAGE Open, , vol. 13(2), pages 21582440231, June.
    9. Chan, Yue-Cheong & Saffar, Walid & Wei, K.C. John, 2021. "How economic policy uncertainty affects the cost of raising equity capital: Evidence from seasoned equity offerings," Journal of Financial Stability, Elsevier, vol. 53(C).
    10. Yoshito Funashima, 2022. "Economic policy uncertainty and unconventional monetary policy," Manchester School, University of Manchester, vol. 90(3), pages 278-292, June.
    11. Ongena, Steven & Savaşer, Tanseli & Şişli Ciamarra, Elif, 2022. "CEO incentives and bank risk over the business cycle," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 138(C).
    12. Li, Xiao-Ming, 2017. "New evidence on economic policy uncertainty and equity premium," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 46(PA), pages 41-56.
    13. Metiu, Norbert, 2021. "Anticipation effects of protectionist U.S. trade policies," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 133(C).
    14. Marina Diakonova & Luis Molina & Hannes Mueller & Javier J. Pérez & Cristopher Rauh, 2022. "The information content of conflict, social unrest and policy uncertainty measures for macroeconomic forecasting," Working Papers 2232, Banco de España.
    15. Lee, Seung Jung & Liu, Lucy Qian & Stebunovs, Viktors, 2022. "Risk-taking spillovers of U.S. monetary policy in the global market for U.S. dollar corporate loans," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 138(C).
    16. Miescu, Mirela & Rossi, Raffaele, 2021. "COVID-19-induced shocks and uncertainty," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 139(C).
    17. Fan, Jianyong & Liu, Yu & Zhang, Qi & Zhao, Peng, 2022. "Does government debt impede firm innovation? Evidence from the rise of LGFVs in China," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 138(C).
    18. Goodness C. Aye & Rangan Gupta, 2019. "Macroeconomic Uncertainty And The Comovement In Buying Versus Renting In The Usa," Advances in Decision Sciences, Asia University, Taiwan, vol. 23(3), pages 93-121, September.
    19. Marc Burri & Daniel Kaufmann, 2020. "A daily fever curve for the Swiss economy," Swiss Journal of Economics and Statistics, Springer;Swiss Society of Economics and Statistics, vol. 156(1), pages 1-11, December.
    20. Bloom, Nicholas & Bunn, Philip & Chen, Scarlet & Mizen, Paul & Smietanka, Pawel & Thwaites, Gregory, 2019. "The impact of Brexit on UK firms," Bank of England working papers 818, Bank of England.

    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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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.