Relative Wealth Concerns, Executive Compensation, and Systemic Risk-Taking

Qi Liu () and Bo Sun

No 1164, International Finance Discussion Papers from Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.)

Abstract: Given the recent empirical evidence on peer effects in CEO compensation, this paper theoretically examines how relative wealth concerns, in which a manager?s satisfaction with his own compensation depends on the compensation of other managers, affect the equilibrium contracting strategy and managerial risk-taking. We find that such externalities can generate pay-for-luck as an efficient compensation vehicle in equilibrium. In expectation of pay-for-luck in other firms, tying managerial pay to luck provides insurance to managers against a compensation shortfall relative to executive peers during market fluctuations. When all firms pay for luck, we show that an effort-inducing mechanism exists: managers have additional incentives to exert effort in utilizing investment opportunities, which helps them keep up with their peers during industry movements. In addition, we show that compensation arrangements involving pay-for-luck that are efficient from the shareholders? perspective can nonetheless exacerbate aggregate fluctuations in the real economy by incentivizing excessive systemic risk-taking, especially in periods of heightened risk.

Keywords: Relative wealth concerns; Managerial compensation; Pay-for-luck; Excessive risk-taking (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D82 D86 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 43 pages
Date: 2016-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-bec, nep-hrm and nep-lma
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.federalreserve.gov/econresdata/ifdp/2016/files/ifdp1164.pdf (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:fip:fedgif:1164

DOI: 10.17016/IFDP.2016.1164

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in International Finance Discussion Papers from Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Ryan Wolfslayer ; Keisha Fournillier ().