BAD PRESS AND BIG PAY

Negative press about high CEO pay changes the kind of compensation corporate leaders get, but not its absolute value, a study finds. The researchers looked at 26,123 articles in the press mentioning executive pay, from 1990 to 2010, drawing on the Factiva news database and using software that identified negative language. The most criticized type of pay, until recently, was stock options, and several periods between 1991 and 2003 stood out as times of high criticism. When negativity was approximately 10% higher than normal, the amount of stock options received by the average CEO fell 8%—but salary and bonuses rose 5%, stock awards rose 8% and "other" compensation rose 4%, the researchers report. In 2009, bonuses became the most criticized kind of compensation and fell 17% in that year, but stock grants rose 20% and CEO pay, overall, rose 1%.

"Public Opinion and Executive Compensation," Camelia M. Kuhnen and Alexandra Niessen, Management Science (July)