{"title":"Performance-Based Compensation in Professional Service Firms","authors":"C. Ittner, D. Larcker, Mina Pizzini","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.468340","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.468340","url":null,"abstract":"The purpose of this paper is to extend our understanding of theoretical agency considerations in the choice of compensation contracts by examining the use of performance-based compensation in professional service firms. We focus on compensation practices for physicians in medical group practices because this setting has several distinctive features that enhance our ability to study a wide variety of agency issues. Our sample covers 16,659 individual physicians in 778 practices. Consistent with agency theory, we find that the extent to which individual physicians are compensated using performance-based pay increases with the informativeness of standard clinical productivity measures. Monitoring serves as substitutes for performance-based compensation, but only in member-owned firms. The use of a common salary/bonus mix for all physicians is greater in smaller practices with little diversity in practice specialties. Member-owned firms also tend to use a common compensation mix when surgeons represent a greater proportion of members and when physicians staff hospitals, but tend to tailor the mix when there is greater variation in physician experience and in the amount of time physicians spend on non-clinical activities. Finally, equal-share arrangements tend to be used instead of salaries and/or bonuses in more technical practices where physicians have similar specialties and experience levels.","PeriodicalId":115265,"journal":{"name":"LSN: Compensation Law (Topic)","volume":"48 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2003-09-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128332401","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Dividend Payout and Executive Compensation: Theory and Evidence","authors":"Nalinaksha Bhattacharyya, Cameron K.J. Morrill, Amin Mawani","doi":"10.1111/j.1467-629X.2007.00255.x","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-629X.2007.00255.x","url":null,"abstract":"Recent studies have documented an association between managerial compensation and firm dividend policy. Bhattacharyya (2000) develops a model of dividend payout that is based in the principal-agent paradigm. In Bhattacharyya's model, managerial quality and effort are unobservable to shareholders and therefore first best contracts are not possible. He demonstrates analytically that the second best compensation contract motivates high quality managers to retain and invest firm earnings, and motivates low quality managers to distribute income to shareholders. This study presents results of tobit regression analyses of US firm dividend payouts over the period 1992-2001 that are consistent with the Bhattacharyya model.","PeriodicalId":115265,"journal":{"name":"LSN: Compensation Law (Topic)","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2003-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129369062","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Corporate Governance in Transition: Ten Empirical Findings on Shareholder Value and Industrial Relations in Germany","authors":"M. Höpner","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.287460","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.287460","url":null,"abstract":"Within the context of debates over national varieties of capitalism, this paper discusses the shareholder value orientation of the 40 largest listed German companies. Three dimensions of shareholder value are distinguished: the communicative dimension, the operative dimension and the dimension of managerial compensation. A shareholder value index compiling data on accounting, investor relations, variable top-management compensation and the implementation of profitability goals makes it possible to compare the shareholder orientations of the companies. The shareholder value phenomenon is explained first by the exposure to markets - the international product market, capital market pressures and the market for corporate control - and, secondly, by internal developments - changing management careers, increasing management compensation and reduced monitoring by banks and corporate networks - which cause external impulses to increase shareholder value to fall on fertile ground. Conflicts over shareholder orientation result in changing coalitions between shareholders, management, and employees. Shareholder value does not make companies opt out of central collective agreements or endanger the existence of employees' codetermination, but it does lead to more market-driven industrial relations.","PeriodicalId":115265,"journal":{"name":"LSN: Compensation Law (Topic)","volume":"69 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2001-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128270983","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Who Gets the Reward? An Empirical Exploration of Bonus Pay and Task Characteristics","authors":"Wendelin Schnedler","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.264803","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.264803","url":null,"abstract":"Contract theory predicts that workers are remunerated based on all available unbiased individual performance measures. In the real world, measures are often biased: tasks are too complex to include all measures, unforeseen contingencies occur for which contracts specify nothing, and the necessity of cooperation and coordination at tasks would be undermined by purely individual measures. Hence, alternative incentive mechanisms are employed (implicit contracts, efficiency wages, wage profiles, tournaments). This suggests that bonus pay is linked to task characteristics: complex tasks will be negatively related to bonus pay, unforeseen contingencies and the necessity to cooperate or coordinate will be positively correlated to premiums on aggregated levels such as team or firm bonus. The present article explores these relations using a French cross-sectional micro-data set. While complexity is found not to be negatively related to bonus pay, the other two effects are supported by the data.","PeriodicalId":115265,"journal":{"name":"LSN: Compensation Law (Topic)","volume":"71 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2000-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123478235","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Executive Compensation Using Relative-Performance-Based Options: Evaluating the Structure and Costs of Indexed Options","authors":"L. Meulbroek","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.281028","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.281028","url":null,"abstract":"This paper examines how an option plan that rewards managers for firm performance relative to some market or industry benchmark should be structured, and gauges the deadweight costs of such a plan. Relative-performance-based compensation advocates contend that conventional stock options do not adequately discriminate between strong and weak managers, typically suggesting \"indexed options,\" that is, options with an exercise price linked to a market or industry index, as a remedy. A close examination of indexed options, however, reveals a fundamental problem: indexed options do not function as intended. Instead, their payoff remains highly sensitive to market or industry price movements. This paper proposes an alternative option design that does remove the effects of the desired benchmark. This structure uses an option with a fixed exercise price, where the underlying asset is a portfolio comprised of the firm's stock hedged against market and industry price movements. The paper then compares the deadweight cost of this performance-benchmarked option to that of a conventional stock option. Deadweight costs inevitably accompany any equity-based compensation program, because the firm's managers must be exposed to firm-specific risks to properly align incentives, and this forced concentrated exposure prevents managers from optimal portfolio diversification. Undiversified managers are exposed to the firm's total volatility, rather than the smaller systematic portion faced by the well-diversified investor, meaning that they will always value their stock- and option-based compensation at less than its market value. I estimate the cost of this lost diversification, and find that, perhaps surprisingly, the gap between the firm's cost (the market value) and the manager's private value of an option is 57% greater for relative-performance-based options than for conventional options. The relative-performance based options have larger deadweight costs because, by design, they strip away the manager's exposure to all systematic risk, leaving her with a portfolio with an expected return no better than the risk-free rate. The paper discusses the practical implications of this analysis for firms adopting relative-performance-based option plans.","PeriodicalId":115265,"journal":{"name":"LSN: Compensation Law (Topic)","volume":"2 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2000-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116835749","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Wealth of the Unemployed: Adequacy and Implications for Unemployment Insurance","authors":"J. Gruber","doi":"10.3386/W7348","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3386/W7348","url":null,"abstract":"While there has been considerable discussion of the adequacy of unemployment insurance (UI) benefits as a form of income replacement, there is little evidence on the other resources that the unemployed have to finance their unemployment spells. In this paper I focus on focus on one form of resources, own wealth holdings. I find that the median worker has financial assets sufficient to finance roughly two-thirds of the income loss from an unemployment spell, but that there is tremendous heterogeneity in wealth holdings; almost one-third of workers can't even replace 10% of their income loss. Most strikingly, ex-ante wealth holdings decline precipitously with realized unemployment durations, both absolutely and (especially) relative to ex-post income loss, suggesting that adequacy could be increased if UI benefits were targeted to those with longer spells. I also find strong evidence that individuals who are eligible for more generous UI draw down their wealth more slowly during unemployment spells. This demonstrates that wealth is used as a consumption smoothing device alongside UI to cope with the income loss from unemployment.","PeriodicalId":115265,"journal":{"name":"LSN: Compensation Law (Topic)","volume":"200 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1999-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114370200","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}