CEO excess compensation: the impact of compensation committee quality and corporate social responsibility

ABSTRACT

This study examines whether compensation committee quality and corporate social responsibility are related to CEO excess compensation. Using a U.S. sample from 2008 to 2013, this study finds that high-quality compensation committees can design compensation arrangements that limit CEOs’ ability to extract excessive compensation. Furthermore, according to this study, CEOs tend to overinvest in corporate social responsibility in order to extract extra compensation.

KEYWORDS:

• Compensation committee quality
• corporate social responsibility
• CEO excess compensation

JEL CLASSIFICATION:

• M12
• M14
• G34

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Feng Chia University [21H00705]; Ministry of Science and Technology, Taiwan [MOST 106-2410-H-035-033-].