Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/203305 
Year of Publication: 
2019
Series/Report no.: 
SAFE Working Paper No. 160
Version Description: 
This Draft: January 2019
Publisher: 
Goethe University Frankfurt, SAFE - Sustainable Architecture for Finance in Europe, Frankfurt a. M.
Abstract: 
We study how US chief executive officers (CEOs) invest their deferred compensation plans depending on the firm's profitability. By looking at the correlation between the CEO's return on these plans and the firm's stock return, we show that deferred compensation is to a large extent invested in the company equity in good times and divested from it in bad times. The divestment from company equity in bad times arguably re ects CEOs' incentive to \abandon" the firm and to invest in alternative instruments to preserve the value of their deferred compensation plans. This result suggests that the incentive alignment effects of deferred compensation crucially depend on the firm's health status.
Subjects: 
Executive Compensation
Deferred Compensation
Corporate Distress
JEL: 
G32
G34
Persistent Identifier of the first edition: 
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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