infonet-economy

CEO compensation has increased substantially over the past 15 years, but so has forced turnover. Motivated by this observation, we investigate whether part of the development of CEO pay can be explained by a premium which compensates CEOs for increased job risk. We find that for the CEOs of the largest US corporations, a one percentage point increase in turnover risk is, on average, associated with about 4% more in terms of total compensation. This relation is much stronger in the cross section than it is over time, and it does not appear to be driven by endogeneity. Our findings are consistent with a model of effcient contracting, but are harder to reconcile with a model of entrenched CEOs.