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Report
Corporate governance and banks: what have we learned from the financial crisis?
Recent academic work and policy analysis give insight into the governance problems exposed by the financial crisis and suggest possible solutions. We begin this paper by explaining why governance of banks differs from governance of nonfinancial firms. We then look at four areas of governance: executive compensation, boards, risk management, and market discipline. We discuss promising solutions and areas where further research is needed.
Journal Article
Convex payoffs: implications for risk-taking and financial reform
Financial executive pay is a convex function of profits if recipients get a greater increment in pay when returns are high as opposed to moderate, compared with when returns are moderate as opposed to low. Convex compensation packages give financial executives incentive to adopt risky investment projects, implement highly levered capital structures, and create new risk. Financial regulators may be able to enforce changes in compensation that would attenuate these adverse effects.
Speech
Still more lessons from the crisis
Remarks at the Foreign Policy Association Corporate Dinner, New York City
Working Paper
Executive compensation: a new view from a long-term perspective, 1936-2005
We analyze the long-run trends in executive compensation using a new panel dataset of top executives in large firms from 1936 to 2005. In sharp contrast to the well-known steep upward trajectory of pay of the past 30 years, the median real value of compensation was remarkably flat from the late 1940s to the mid-1970s, highlighting a weak relationship between compensation and aggregate firm size. While this correlation has changed considerably over the century, the cross-sectional relationship between pay and firm size has remained stable. Another surprising finding is that the sensitivity of ...
Journal Article
Issues in corporate governance
On September 29, 2002, William J. McDonough, President of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, delivered the William Taylor Memorial Lecture in Washington, D.C., at an event cosponsored by the William Taylor Memorial Fund and the Group of Thirty, a private, international consultative group on economic and monetary affairs. In his lecture, Mr. McDonough describes the actions already taken by private and public sector groups to strengthen corporate governance and accounting standards and identifies areas where reforms are still needed.
Report
Resolving troubled systemically important cross-border financial institutions: is a new corporate organizational form required?
This paper explores the advantages of a new financial charter for large, complex, internationally active financial institutions that would address the corporate governance challenges of such organizations, including incentive problems in risk decisions and the complicated corporate and regulatory structures that impede cross-border resolutions. The charter envisions a single entity with broad powers in which the extent and timing of compensation are tied to financial results, senior managers and risk takers form a new risk-bearing stakeholder class, and a home-country-based resolution regime ...
Discussion Paper
Incentive compensation in the banking industry: insights from economic theory
How can banks and similar institutions design optimal compensation systems? Would such systems conflict with the goals of society? This paper considers a theoretical framework of how banks structure job contracts with their employees to explore three points: the structure of a socially optimal compensation system; the structure of a compensation system that is privately optimal, given the reality of government-guaranteed bank debt; and policy interventions that can lead from the second structure to the first. Analysis reveals a potential policy option: providing proper incentives to banks by ...
Working Paper
Risk aversion, performance pay, and the principal-agent problem
This paper calculates numerical solutions to the principal-agent problem and compares the results to the stylized facts of CEO compensation. The numerical predictions come from parameterizing the models of Grossman and Hart and of Holmstrom and Milgrom. While the correct incentives for a CEO can greatly enhance a firm's performance, providing such incentives need not be expensive. For many parameter values, CEO compensation need only increase by about $10 for every $1,000 of additional shareholder value; for some values, the amount is 0.003 cents. The paper thus answers two challenges posed ...
Working Paper
A unified analysis of executive pay: the case of the banking industry
This study examines executive compensation determinants in the U.S. banking industry. Multiple theories of executive pay are discussed and tested using a relatively homogenous sample. We perform an in-depth look at the corporate governance and ownership structure of the companies selected. We explore the simultaneous relationship between compensation, firm performance, and board strength, exploiting variables unique to the banking industry. Our primary finding is that after controlling for both regulatory oversight and external market discipline, a strong board is associated with higher firm ...
Newsletter
Executive compensation and market risks
Some U.S. taxpayers were angry and felt betrayed when financial company executives received large bonuses in the midst of the 2008-09 financial crisis. These executives headed some of the same firms whose risky practices contributed to the crisis?and then later received billions of dollars in government bailouts. Who makes the changes in executive compensation policies and regulations to avoid such risks in the future? Read the February 2010 Newsletter for answers and interesting insights.