Chief executive pay and remuneration committee independence

This article tests the impact of remuneration committee independence on Chief Executive (CEO) pay. FTSE350 companies between 1996 and 2008 are used to assess whether remuneration committees facilitate optimal contracting or whether CEOs capture the pay-setting process and inflate their own remuneration. This panel has a number of advantages over prior samples and, in particular, contains a more comprehensive assessment of non-executive directors' independence. No evidence of a relationship between CEO pay and director independence is found, challenging the theory of managerial power and the received wisdom of institutional guidance. © 2011 Blackwell Publishing Ltd and the Department of Economics, University of Oxford

The impact of Athena SWAN in UK medical schools

This paper examines the impact of the Athena SWAN initiative on female careers in UK medical schools by exploiting two natural experiments. The first is the introduction of Athena SWAN charter in 2005, whereby twelve UK institutions selected into the charter. The second is the announcement in 2011 by the NIHR, to only shortlist medical schools with a ‘silver’ Athena SWAN award for certain research grants going forward. This second change potentially impacts schools that are further away from silver status than those that were already close in 2011. While there is a marked improvement of women succeeding in medical schools during the sample period, early Athena SWAN adopters have not increased female participation by more than other schools whose institution signed up later. In addition, tying funding to Athena SWAN silver status has yet to have an impact on female careers, although medical schools have invested in efforts to achieve silver status

Winners and losers of corporate tournaments

In a corporate tournament, executive directors are motivated by the prospect of promotion to CEO, with winners receiving large increases in remuneration. Tournament losers by contrast face a discrete loss in their valuation of their position, since the prospect of them becoming CEO is substantially reduced. We argue that this offers an opportunity to test the predictions of tournament theory by observing the quit behavior and the wages of the losing directors. We find a sharp increase in the likelihood that directors leave the firm. The directors who remain receive an increase in their remuneration following a rival’s promotion

Wages and labor productivity: evidence from injuries in the National Football League

Empirical studies face severe difficulties when identifying the relationship between wages and labor productivity. This paper presents a novel identification strategy and demonstrates that the connection between wages and labor productivity is remarkably robust even when institutional constraints serve to distort the relationship. Identification is achieved by considering injuries to professional football players as an exogenous shock to labor productivity. This is an ideal empirical setting because injured players in the National Football League cannot be replaced easily because franchises are constrained by the salary cap. Injuries are shown to play a major role in franchise success and a tight connection between wages and marginal productivity emerges. This is in spite of regulatory frictions that serve to hold down wages for some workers. (JEL J24, J31, Z22

Wages and labor productivity. Evidence from injuries in the National Football League

Studies in labor economics face severe difficulties when identifying the relationship between wages and labor productivity. This paper presents a novel identification strategy and demonstrates that the connection between wages and labor productivity is remarkably robust even when institutional constraints serve to distort the relationship. Identification is achieved by considering injuries to professional football players as an exogenous shock to labor productivity. This is an ideal empirical setting because injured players in the NFL can not be replaced easily because franchises are constrained by the salary cap. Injuries are shown to play a major role in franchise success and a tight connection between wages and marginal productivity emerges. This is in spite of regulatory frictions that serve to hold down wages for some workers

Bank competition and financial stability : evidence from the U.S. banking deregulation

This paper examines the causal relationship between banking competition and financial stability. We find that an exogenous competition shock significantly improved the stability of banks, consistent with the ‘competition-stability hypothesis’. We show that banks improved their cost efficiency and reduced credit risks in response to U.S. banking deregulation. In addition, we show the competition shock had a larger impact on banks who were initially operating in a less competitive environment. Our findings provide the first quasi-natural experimental evidence on the non-linear relationship between bank competition and financial stability

Automated optical identification of a large complete northern hemisphere sample of flat spectrum radio sources with S_6cm > 200 mJy

This paper describes the automated optical APM identification of radio sources from the Jodrell Bank - VLA Astrometric Survey (JVAS), as used for the search for distant radio-loud quasars. The sample has been used to investigate possible relations between optical and radio properties of flat spectrum radio sources. From the 915 sources in the sample, 756 have an optical APM identification at a red (e) and/or blue (o) plate,resulting in an identification fraction of 83% with a completeness and reliability of 98% and 99% respectively. About 20% are optically identified with extended APM objects on the red plates, e.g. galaxies. However the distinction between galaxies and quasars can not be done properly near the magnitude limit of the POSS-I plates. The identification fraction appears to decrease from >90% for sources with a 5 GHz flux density of >1 Jy, to <80% for sources at 0.2 Jy. The identification fraction, in particular that for unresolved quasars, is found to be lower for sources with steeper radio spectra. In agreement with previous studies, we find that the quasars at low radio flux density levels also tend to have fainter optical magnitudes, although there is a large spread. In addition, objects with a steep radio-to-optical spectral index are found to be mainly highly polarised quasars, supporting the idea that in these objects the polarised synchrotron component is more prominent. It is shown that the large spread in radio-to-optical spectral index is possibly caused by source to source variations in the Doppler boosting of the synchrotron component [Abridged].Comment: LaTex, 17 pages, 5 gif figures, 4 tables. Accepted for publication in MNRAS. High resolution figures can be found at http://www.roe.ac.uk/~ignas

Cost-efficient performance-vesting equity

We analyze the incentive effects of the Performance-Vesting Equity (PVE) component of executive pay that is characterized by zero exercise price and performance-contingent vesting. We demonstrate how PVE with upward-sloping convex/concave vesting curves can be a more efficient risk-sharing and incentive alignment device than strictly convex stock options