Troubled by unequal pay rather than low pay:The incentive effects of a top management team pay gap

作     者：Yue Xu Yunguo Liu Gerald J.Lobo 

作者机构：School of Business Sun Yat-sen University C.T. Bauer College of Business University of Houston 

出 版 物：《China Journal of Accounting Research》 (中国会计学刊（英文版）)

年 卷 期：2016年第9卷第2期

页      面：115-135页

学科分类：12[管理学] 0202[经济学-应用经济学] 1202[管理学-工商管理] 0201[经济学-理论经济学] 1201[管理学-管理科学与工程(可授管理学、工学学位)] 

基　　金：support of the National Natural Science Foundation of China (71372150  71572197  and 71032006) 

主　　题：TMT pay level Pay gap Property rights SOE salary reform 

摘      要：We examine the relationships with firm performance of the internal pay gap among individual members of the top management team(TMT) and the compensation level of TMT members relative to their industry peers. We find that pay gap is positively related to firm performance and that this positive relation is stronger when the TMT pay level is higher than the industry median. However, we do not observe such effects in Chinese state-owned enterprises(SOEs),in which both the executive managerial market and compensation are government-regulated. We also document that cutting central SOE managers pay level can increase firm value, whereas doing so for local SOE managers has the opposite effect. Our findings have important implications for research on TMT compensation as well as for policy makers considering SOE compensation reform.