Power and pay: The moderating role of CSR contracting in CEO compensation

We empirically investigate the effect of CEO power on CEO compensation. Additionally, we examine the moderating role of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) contracting on the relationship between CEO power and CEO compensation. Analyzing 3,629 firm-year observations, we find that there is a statistically significant relationship between CEO power and CEO compensation. While we do not find significant results for the moderating role of CSR contracting on the relationship between CEO power and total compensation, our additional analyses show that when firms integrate CSR criteria in CEO compensation contracts, CEOs with higher power can extract higher non-performance based compensation.