Corporate Governance: An International Review, 2012, 20(6): 575–592
© 2012 Blackwell Publishing Ltd
doi:10.1111/j.1467-8683.2012.00935.x
and have therefore only estimated static pay models developed
using agency theory. We relax this restriction and
supplement the traditional agency theory approach to
executive compensation with insights gained from the
wage dynamic theory developed in the labor economic
field. We view the CEO compensation decision as a
dynamic process where incomplete information and learning
are as important as incentive alignment. We demonstrate
that CEO pay is highly persistent which is consistent
with the presence of adjustment costs and learning in the
board pay-setting process.
Our study adds to the Chinese executive compensation
literature in the following ways. First, we find that CEO pay
is positively and significantly linked to firm performance,
using data on public firms from 2000 to 2010. There is a
positive association between CEO pay and return on assets
(an accounting-based performance measure) but the link
between pay and stock returns (a market-based performance
measure) is less well determined. We find that CEOs are
increasingly holding equity in their firms, an important
avenue for aligning owner and manager interests. Moreover,
we find that the average value of CEO shareholdings is significantly
higher than the average value of current CEO pay,
suggesting that equity ownership is an important source of
CEO incentives. We also find that some firms have begun to
grant stock options and restricted stock to their CEOs since
2005. However, the take-up is not very dramatic with only
about 2 or 3 percent of firms doing so. Here, we believe,
there is much more scope for aligning owners’ and management’s
interests.