Research note: Investor perceptions of comparable-to-industry versus higher-than-industry pay ratio disclosures

The usefulness of the CEO-to-employee pay ratio disclosure to investors is subject to significant debate. Our experiment examines participant responses to higher-than-industry and comparable-to-industry pay ratio disclosures in a company. A prior experiment by Kelly and Seow (2016) (hereafter KS) fo...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: KELLY, Khim, SEOW, Jean Lin
Format: text
Language:English
Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2018
Subjects:
Online Access:https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/soa_research/1761
https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/context/soa_research/article/2788/viewcontent/research_note.pdf
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Institution: Singapore Management University
Language: English
Description
Summary:The usefulness of the CEO-to-employee pay ratio disclosure to investors is subject to significant debate. Our experiment examines participant responses to higher-than-industry and comparable-to-industry pay ratio disclosures in a company. A prior experiment by Kelly and Seow (2016) (hereafter KS) found that incrementally disclosing a higher-than-industry pay ratio on top of higher-than-industry CEO pay had indirect negative effects on the company’s perceived investment potential, via negative perceptions about the fairness of the CEO pay and workplace climate. We find that the negative indirect effects of pay ratio disclosures on perceived investment potential in KS are replicable in our study, and for a less extreme comparable-to-industry pay ratio. We do not find evidence that the effects of incremental pay ratio disclosure on investor perceptions are stronger when the pay ratio is higher-than-industry than when it is comparable-to-industry. Our study suggests that the ability of pay ratio disclosures to impact investor perceptions extends across a range of pay ratios.