Board gender diversity and CEO compensation: Strengthening governance and pay-performance sensitivity

IF 2.9 3区经济学 Q1 ECONOMICS

Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance Pub Date : 2025-05-08 DOI:10.1016/j.qref.2025.102009

Chandra S. Mishra

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Abstract

This study examines the relationship between female directorship and CEO compensation, focusing on pay-performance sensitivity, total compensation, and equity-based pay. We address endogeneity issues, CEO compensation persistence, and unobserved heterogeneity using a multi-level fixed effects estimator, dynamic panel models, system GMM, cross-lagged structural panel models, and instrumental variables models. Our findings indicate that female directorship is positively associated with CEO pay-performance sensitivity and equity-based compensation but negatively associated with total CEO compensation. This suggests that female directors emphasize performance-based incentives over fixed pay, reinforcing a stronger alignment between CEO pay and shareholder value. Further, CEO power and managerial ability significantly moderate this relationship. When the CEO is the board chairman, female directorship is positively associated with total and equity compensation. Similarly, higher managerial ability strengthens the relation between female directorship and equity-based pay while weakening its negative association with total compensation. Our findings contribute to corporate governance, agency theory, and resource dependence theory by demonstrating that board gender diversity enhances monitoring effectiveness and alters executive compensation structures to improve firm accountability and performance alignment. These insights are important for board composition policies, gender diversity mandates, and executive pay design.

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董事会性别多元化与CEO薪酬：强化治理和薪酬绩效敏感性

本研究考察了女性董事和CEO薪酬之间的关系，重点关注薪酬绩效敏感性、总薪酬和基于股权的薪酬。我们使用多层固定效应估计器、动态面板模型、系统GMM、交叉滞后结构面板模型和工具变量模型来解决内生性问题、CEO薪酬持久性和未观察到的异质性。研究结果表明，女性董事与CEO薪酬绩效敏感性和股权薪酬呈正相关，但与CEO总薪酬呈负相关。这表明，女性董事强调基于绩效的激励，而不是固定薪酬，从而强化了CEO薪酬与股东价值之间的更强一致性。此外，CEO权力和管理能力显著调节了这一关系。当CEO担任董事会主席时，女性董事比例与总薪酬和股权薪酬呈正相关。同样，较高的管理能力加强了女性董事与股权薪酬之间的关系，削弱了其与总薪酬之间的负相关关系。我们的研究结果有助于公司治理、代理理论和资源依赖理论，证明董事会性别多样性提高了监督有效性，改变了高管薪酬结构，从而改善了公司问责制和绩效一致性。这些洞见对于董事会构成政策、性别多元化要求和高管薪酬设计都很重要。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance ECONOMICS-

CiteScore

6.00

自引率

2.90%

发文量

118

期刊介绍： The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance (QREF) attracts and publishes high quality manuscripts that cover topics in the areas of economics, financial economics and finance. The subject matter may be theoretical, empirical or policy related. Emphasis is placed on quality, originality, clear arguments, persuasive evidence, intelligent analysis and clear writing. At least one Special Issue is published per year. These issues have guest editors, are devoted to a single theme and the papers have well known authors. In addition we pride ourselves in being able to provide three to four article "Focus" sections in most of our issues.