Human Resources Management Commons^™

Boom & Bust: The Perils Of Guaranteed Long Term Contracts. Evidence From Ops100 Performance Over The Contract Cycle, Heather M. O'Neill

Business and Economics Faculty Publications

This study focuses on panel data of 256 MLB free agent hitters under the 2006-2011 Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) to demonstrate that hitters, on average, increase their offensive production, measured by OPS100, during the last year of their contract and subsequently underperform the first year of the newly signed long term contract. The contract year phenomenon arises from the incentive to land a lucrative guaranteed contract for players not intending to retire. Signing a long term guaranteed contract creates an incentive to shirk (underperform) the first year of the new contract because performance and pay become unlinked and the need …

Do Mlb Hitters Boost Performance In Their Contract Year?, Heather M. O'Neill

Business and Economics Faculty Publications

This study focuses on 256 MLB free agent hitters playing under the 2006-2011 CBA to determine whether they boost their offensive performance in their contract year. Prior studies’ results are mixed, depending on the econometric technique used and the choice of the offensive performance measure.

Having multiple year observations per player, one can incorporate the unobserved traits of the players (ability, risk aversion, work ethic, etc.) by using Fixed Effects (FE) estimation. Since these unmeasured player traits are likely to be correlated with observed predictors of performance (games played, playoff contention, age, etc.), traditionally used Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) and …

The Power Of One: Effects Of Ceo Duality On Compensation Committee Quality And Ceo Compensation, Cindy K. Harris, Carol C. Cirka, Eric Farris

Business and Economics Faculty Publications

This paper contributes to the corporate governance literature by focusing on how Chief Executive Officer (“CEO”) duality and compensation committee quality are related to CEO compensation in the period since passage of the Sarbanes Oxley Act (“SOX”). Unlike research prior to SOX that focused chiefly on committee members’ independence, we measure compensation committee quality in two ways. We consider the average number of board directorships held by compensation committee members as well as the proportion of committee members with prior or current CEO duality experience. We introduce the latter variable as a new measure of quality as it has not …