Mireia Gine

Common Ownership, Competition, and Top Management Incentives

When one firm’s strategy affects other firms’ value, optimal executive incentives depend on whether shareholders have interests in only one or in multiple firms. Performance-sensitive contracts induce managerial effort to reduce costs, and lower costs induce higher output. Hence, greater managerial effort can lead to lower product prices and industry profits. Therefore, steep managerial incentives can be optimal for a single firm and at the same time violate the interests of common owners of several firms in the same industry. Empirically, managerial wealth is more sensitive to performance when a firm’s largest shareholders do not own large stakes in competitors.

Governance Mechanisms and Effective Activism: Evidence from Shareholder Proposals on Poison Pills

This paper studies the interaction between governance mechanisms and the effectiveness of shareholder activism by examining shareholder-initiated proposals on poison pills. After contrasting companies along their governance regime, we observe that dictatorship firms, characterized with higher number of governance provisions, are associated with more activist voting by institutional groups: ownership by mutual funds, independent investment advisors and pension funds are significantly related to greater support of shareholder proposals against poison pills. In democratic firms, characterized with lower levels of restrictions on shareholder rights ownership by various shareholder groups is not as highly correlated with support for these proposals, suggesting perhaps that shareholders use other internal channels to voice concerns. In dictatorships, we find that certain shareholders rely on annual meetings to pressure management, and that management is less likely to take action following shareholder votes. Finally, among all institutional shareholders, management seems more likely to respond favorably in the presence of ownership by public pension funds.

Executive Gender Pay Gaps: The Roles of Female Risk Aversion and Board Representation

Using a large sample of executives in S&P 1500 firms over 1996-2010, we document significant salary and total compensation gaps between female and male executives and explore two possible explanations for the gaps. We find support for greater female risk aversion as one contributing factor. Female executives hold significantly lower equity incentives and demand larger salary premiums for bearing a given level of compensation risk. These results suggest that females’ risk aversion contributes to the observed lower pay levels through its effect on ex ante compensation structures. We also find evidence that the lack of gender diversity on corporate boards affects the size of the gaps. In firms with a higher proportion of female directors on the board, the gaps in salary and total pay levels are lower. Together, these findings suggest that female higher risk aversion may act as a barrier to full pay convergence, despite the mitigating effect from greater gender diversity on the board.Using a large sample of executives in S&P1500 firms over 1996-2010, we document significant salary and total compensation gaps between female and male executives and explore two possible explanations for the gaps. We find support for greater female risk aversion as one contributing factor. Female executives hold significantly lower equity incentives and demand larger salary premiums for bearing a given level of compensation risk. These results suggest that females’ risk aversion contributes to the observed lower pay levels through its effect on ex-ante compensation structures. We also find evidence that the lack of gender diversity on corporate boards affects the size of the gaps. In firms with a higher proportion of female directors on the board, the gaps in salary and total pay levels are lower. Together, these findings suggest that female higher risk aversion may act as a barrier to full pay convergence, despite the mitigating effect from greater gender diversity on the board.