In the paper, Excess-Pay Clawbacks, which was recently made publicly available on SSRN, Nitzan Shilon and I identify substantial deficiencies in the clawback arrangements of public companies. We also explain why the Dodd-Frank Act’s clawback requirement is likely to improve these arrangements, but does not go far enough.

The paper begins by highlighting the problem of “excess pay” – excessively high payouts to executives arising from errors in earnings and other compensation-related metrics. Such excess pay, we explain, can impose substantial costs on shareholders even if there is no manipulation or other misconduct. Unfortunately, directors frequently use their discretion to let current and departed executives keep excess pay. Thus, an optimal clawback policy would require directors to recover excess pay from either current or departed executives.

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