Say-on-Pay: Is Anybody Listening?

Stephani A. Mason, Ann F. Medinets and Dan Palmon ()
Additional contact information
Stephani A. Mason: DePaul University, USA
Ann F. Medinets: Rutgers Business School, USA
Dan Palmon: Rutgers Business School, USA

Multinational Finance Journal, 2016, vol. 20, issue 4, 273-322

Abstract: There is an ongoing debate about whether executives receive excessive compensation, and if so, how to control it. Several countries have instituted say-on-pay rules (shareholders' right to vote on executive compensation) to reduce excessive compensation. However, determining the effectiveness of say-on-pay is difficult because its tenets vary by country due to political, institutional, cultural, economic, and social factors. Policy issues like say-on-pay are complex, ill-structured problems without definitive assumptions, theories, or solutions. Existing say-on-pay research is inconclusive, since some studies find no change in CEO compensation around its adoption, whereas other studies show that say-on-pay lowers CEO pay or changes its composition. This paper chronicles the history of say-on-pay, compares its implementation by groups (e.g. shareholders-initiated versus legislated and binding versus advisory), discusses the complexities of using say-on-pay to address excessive executive compensation, and recommends future research directions.

Keywords: executive compensation; say-on-pay; compensation regulation; shareholder activism; shareholder proposals; corporate governance (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: G38 M48 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.mfsociety.org/modules/modDashboard/uplo ... l1vrbtsadve6krd4.pdf (application/pdf)
http://www.mfsociety.org/modules/modDashboard/uplo ... gleScholar/1407.html (text/html)

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:mfj:journl:v:20:y:2016:i:4:p:273-322

Access Statistics for this article

Multinational Finance Journal is currently edited by Panayiotis C. Andreou

More articles in Multinational Finance Journal from Multinational Finance Journal Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Theodossiou Panayiotis ().