Dynamics of CEO compensation: Old is gold

Hari P. Adhikari, Samuel B. Bulmash, Marcin W. Krolikowski and Nilesh B. Sah

The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, 2015, vol. 57, issue C, 191-206

Abstract: There is an ongoing debate regarding the hiring and compensation of younger versus older employees. In this paper, we examine this question for Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) in the context of the Sarbanes–Oxley Act (SOX) of 2002. We argue that the increased complexities in the post-SOX era (regulatory, technological, and the ever-changing business environment) have forced corporate boards to incentivize top executives for the increased burden. We contend that older CEOs are perceived as more reliable, efficient, and trustworthy (to fulfill the regulatory requirements demanded by SOX) than their younger counterparts. Consistent with our contention, we find that the total compensation of CEOs of U.S. firms has increased significantly for older CEOs as compared to their younger counterparts after the introduction of SOX. Our results are robust to sophisticated econometric techniques and also consistent with the logic that in order to motivate older CEOs (who would have raised substantial personal wealth over time) to keep working rather than retiring or moving to a competitor, their compensation package must be highly competitive.

Keywords: Corporate governance; Agency problems; SOX; CEO age; CEO compensation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: G30 G34 G39 J20 J21 J23 J24 J33 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1062976915000083
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:quaeco:v:57:y:2015:i:c:p:191-206

DOI: 10.1016/j.qref.2015.01.007

Access Statistics for this article

The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance is currently edited by R. J. Arnould and J. E. Finnerty

More articles in The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().