Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Three Essays On The Economics Of Corporate Governance, Kuochih Huang

Doctoral Dissertations

The Great Recession and the revival attention on inequality have cast doubts on various aspects of the governance of Corporate America. Not only the specific design of corporate governance institutions, but also the very purpose of the firm have became hotly debated issues. The first essay investigates the effect of the CEO's equity-based pay on workers' wages and whether the effect is amplified by product market competition. Since the 1980s, Chief Executive Officers' (CEO) pay has exploded, largely in the form of equity-based incentive compensation such as stock awards and options. Using a two-tiered principal-agent model, we show that aligning …