The effects of CEO pay transparency in France. Benchmarking, `catching-up', and outsider scrutiny

Lionel Almeida

Post-Print from HAL

Abstract: The study investigates the evolution of CEO pay after the implementation of new disclosure rules in France. It opposes a managerial labor market view in which firms compete for CEO talent, and a governance institutions view that embraces managerial power, outrage constraint, and agency issues. The findings first show that closely-monitored and below-average CEOs make the most of benchmarking to catch up to their peers. The catch-up effect is partly driven by competition for talent but also by imitation and perceived fairness. Second, public disclosure places CEO pay under outsider scrutiny, producing two distinct effects: most powerful and above-average CEOs receive lower pay rises, and minority shareholders pressure firms into rising bonuses for all CEOs. Overall, transparency yields a convergence of pay levels and higher ratios of bonuses. JEL: G32; G34; L22

Keywords: CEO pay; benchmarking; managerial market; managerial power; corporate control (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016-05-24
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://hal.science/hal-02474780
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Published in 33rd International conference of the French finance association. AFFI 2016, May 2016, Liège, Belgium. ⟨10.2139/ssrn.2787562⟩

Downloads: (external link)
https://hal.science/hal-02474780/document (application/pdf)

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:hal:journl:hal-02474780

DOI: 10.2139/ssrn.2787562

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Post-Print from HAL
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CCSD ().