Publications

2012
Working Paper

Pay Dispersion and Work Performance

By: Alessandro Bucciol and Marco Piovesan

The effect of intra-firm pay dispersion on work performance is controversial and the empirical evidence is mixed. High pay dispersion may act as an extra incentive for employees' effort or it may reduce motivation and team cohesiveness. These effects can also coexist... View Details

Keywords: Performance; Wages; Motivation and Incentives; Groups and Teams; Italy

09 Jun 2003
Research & Ideas

Incentives and Operational Excellence

hospital association buying groups. For their part, the buying groups try to get as many products and services as they can for whatever fee they've agreed to pay in the contract. Owens & Minor decided to offer its customers the option... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

October 2004 (Revised October 2005)
Case

ORIX KK: Incentives in Japan

In the context of Japan's struggling economy of the 1990s, ORIX, a leading Japanese financial services company, implemented a new performance evaluation and compensation system. At the time, many higher-paying western firms were entering the Japanese market and... View Details

Keywords: Performance Evaluation; Cross-Cultural and Cross-Border Issues; Compensation and Benefits; Financial Services Industry; Japan

Educators

May 2012
Article

Incentive Schemes, Sorting and Behavioral Biases of Employees: Experimental Evidence

By: Ian Larkin and Stephen Leider

We investigate how the convexity of a firm's incentives interacts with worker overconfidence to affect sorting decisions and performance. We demonstrate experimentally that overconfident employees are more likely to sort into a non-linear incentive scheme over a linear... View Details

Keywords: Motivation and Incentives; Performance; Behavior; Prejudice and Bias; Decisions; Employees; Wages

April 2002
Article

Internal Capital Markets and Firm-Level Compensation Incentives for Division Managers

By: Julie Wulf

Do multidivisional firms structure compensation contracts for division managers to mitigate incentive problems in their internal capital markets? I find evidence that compensation and investment incentives are substitutes: firms providing a stronger link to firm... View Details

Keywords: Capital Markets; Executive Compensation; Capital Budgeting; Motivation and Incentives; Profit; Decisions; Resource Allocation; Performance; Investment; Contracts

Research Summary

Physician vs. Patient Incentives in Prescription Drug Choice

The market for medical care involves interactions among patients, providers, and the insurers who pay for the care of their enrollees. The division of responsibilities creates scope for agency costs and moral hazard in the physician's treatment choice.... View Details

14 Apr 2003
Research & Ideas

Pay-for-Performance Doesn’t Always Pay Off

their ability to reach if not surpass the goals, start banking on the extra money. In practice, however, the process of connecting pay to performance may be far trickier that it at first appears, according to HBS professor Michael Beer.... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

20 Nov 2012
Working Paper Summaries

Pay Harmony: Peer Comparison and Executive Compensation

Keywords: by Claudine Gartenberg & Julie Wulf

31 Jul 2012
Working Paper Summaries

Investment Incentives in Proprietary and Open-Source Two-Sided Platforms

Keywords: by Ramon Casadesus-Masanell & Gastón Llanes

02 Nov 2009
Research & Ideas

Shareholders Need a Say on Pay

“Historically, when the government tries to set limits it doesn't work very well.” Say on pay has been a research focus of HBS assistant professor Fabrizio Ferri, who started his career at Stern Stewart & Co specializing in... View Details

Keywords: by Julia Hanna; Financial Services

July 2009 (Revised June 2010)
Supplement

Executive Pay and the Credit Crisis of 2008 (B)

By: V.G. Narayanan and Lisa Brem

As the recession lingered on into 2009, the U.S. government sought to limit executive pay and excessive risk. The debate raged over what constituted excessive risk and how best to mitigate it. This case describes the government restrictions on executive pay for TARP... View Details

Keywords: Financial Crisis; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Government Legislation; Executive Compensation; Risk Management; Business and Government Relations; Motivation and Incentives; United States

2012
Working Paper

Earnings Management from the Bottom Up: An Analysis of Managerial Incentives Below the CEO

By: Felix Oberholzer-Gee and Julie Wulf

Performance-based pay is an important instrument to align the interests of managers with the interests of shareholders. However, recent evidence suggests that high-powered incentives also provide managers with incentives to manipulate the firm's reported earnings. The... View Details

Keywords: Compensation and Benefits; Interests; Business and Shareholder Relations; Motivation and Incentives; Earnings Management; Performance Evaluation; Stock Options

November 2013
Article

Which U.S. Market Interactions Affect CEO Pay? Evidence from UK Companies

By: Joseph Gerakos, Joseph Piotroski and Suraj Srinivasan

This paper examines how different types of interactions with U.S. markets by non-U.S. firms are associated with higher level of CEO pay, greater emphasis on incentive-based compensation, and smaller pay gap with U.S. firms. Using a sample of CEOs of UK firms and using... View Details

Keywords: CEO Compensation; International Pay; Incentives; Cross-listing; United Kingdom; Motivation and Incentives; Executive Compensation; Globalization; Corporate Governance; United Kingdom; United States

SSRN

August 2004
Article

Appearing and Disappearing Dividends: The Link to Catering Incentives

By: Malcolm Baker and Jeffrey Wurgler

We document a close link between fluctuations in the propensity to pay dividends and catering incentives. First, we use the methodology of Fama and French (J. Finan. Econ. (2001)) to identify a total of four distinct trends in the propensity to pay dividends... View Details

Keywords: Dividends; Payout Policy; Catering; Dividend Premium; Investor Sentiment; Investment Return; Motivation and Incentives; Trends; Stocks; Financial Services Industry

Spring 2023
Article

Incentive Contract Design and Employee-Initiated Innovation: Evidence from the Field

By: Wei Cai, Susanna Gallani and Jee-Eun Shin

This study examines how the design of incentive contracts for tasks defined as workers’ official responsibilities (i.e., standard tasks) influences workers’ propensity to engage in employee-initiated innovation (EII). EII corresponds to innovation activities that are... View Details

Keywords: Employee-initiated Innovation; Contract Design; Rank-and-file; Extra-role Behaviors; Compensation and Benefits; Motivation and Incentives; Innovation and Management

September 2003 (Revised October 2005)
Case

Performance Pay for MGOA Physicians (A)

Examines the transition of an orthopedic surgical group at a premier teaching and research hospital from a system in which the surgeons are compensated with flat salaries to a system where they are compensated based on profitability. Allows for an examination of... View Details

Keywords: Value Creation; Motivation and Incentives; Nonprofit Organizations; Health Care and Treatment; Compensation and Benefits; Health Industry

Educators