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Lower Salaries and No Options? On the Optimal Structure of Executive PayIngolf DittmannErasmus University Rotterdam (EUR) - Erasmus School of Economics (ESE); Tinbergen Institute; Erasmus Research Institute of Management (ERIM); European Corporate Governance Institute (ECGI) Ernst G. MaugUniversity of Mannheim - Department of Business Administration and Finance; European Corporate Governance Institute (ECGI) Journal of Finance, Vol. 62, Issue 1, pp. 303-343, 2007 ECGI - Finance Working Paper No. 32/2003 EFA 2005 Moscow Meetings Paper Abstract: We estimate a standard principal agent model with constant relative risk aversion and lognormal stock prices for a sample of 598 US CEOs. The model is widely used in the compensation literature, but it predicts that almost all of the CEOs in our sample should hold no stock options. Instead, CEOs should have lower base salaries and receive additional shares in their companies. For a typical value of relative risk aversion, almost half of the CEOs in our sample would be required to purchase additional stock in their companies from their private savings. The model predicts contracts that would reduce average compensation costs by 20% while providing the same incentives and the same utility to CEOs. We investigate a number of extensions and modifications of the standard model, but find none of them to be satisfactory. We conclude that the standard principal agent model typically used in the literature cannot rationalize observed contracts. One reason may be that executive pay contracts are suboptimal.
Number of Pages in PDF File: 50 Keywords: Executive compensation, stock options JEL Classification: G30, M52 Accepted Paper SeriesDate posted: August 7, 2005 ; Last revised: August 10, 2009Suggested CitationContact Information
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