Executive Remuneration in China: A Literature Review

Abstract

Kato & Long (2005) state that executive compensation has attracted much attention from economists in the past two decades yet most academic work on executive compensation has been concentrated on a few developed countries such as the U.S. and the U.K., mainly due to data availability. In light of the mounting interest in the vital role that corporate governance may play in economic development, however, it is of considerable importance to study how firms in developing countries compensate their top executives. In particular, for transition economies struggling to transform their state-owned enterprises (SOEs) into profitable modern firms through various reform measures, the provision of efficient managerial incentives is a crucial ingredient of the successful transition of the economy. Since executive pay-performance link represents the bulk of managerial incentives for top management, a closer look at the nature of pay-performance link for top management in transitional economies will provide much needed information for the evaluation of the current reform effort and the designing of future reform measures.

Keywords: executive, remuneration, compensation, CEO, financial performance, corporate governance

JEL Classification: D21, D22, D31, D79, G35, L25, M41