Influential independent directors' reputation incentives: Impacts on CEO compensation contracts and financial reporting

Ronald Masulis and Shawn Mobbs

Journal of Corporate Finance, 2023, vol. 82, issue C

Abstract: We study how reputation incentives of influential independent directors (those holding multiple directorships) affect CEO compensation and firm financial reporting decisions. We find that CEO equity-based incentives, measured by CEO delta, vega and the number of equity grants are positively related to these directors' reputation incentives. These director reputation incentives also mitigate the perverse CEO incentives to inflate earnings, which arise from such high-powered compensation structures, by motivating increased board monitoring to limit discretionary accruals and real activity-based earnings management. These findings are invariant to endogeneity adjustments under multiple approaches, including exogenous changes in reputation incentives.

Keywords: Independent directors; Reputation incentives; CEO compensation; Earnings management (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: G30 G32 G34 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:corfin:v:82:y:2023:i:c:s0929119923000986

DOI: 10.1016/j.jcorpfin.2023.102449

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