Martin Gregor's research covered by Duke Financial Economics Center, Columbia University, and UCLA

Recent research by our colleague Martin Gregor has been featured in expert forums on financial regulation and corporate governance. In this interdisciplinary research, Martin Gregor examines the optimal compensation practices for corporate board members and the links between the optimal contracts of CEOs and independent directors.

This week, Duke Financial Economics Center promoted this research in a post on the unintended positive effects of the scarcity of qualified directors. Its central and unexpected thesis is that a shortage of directors - that follows from quotas and independence mandates - actually makes the incentive contracts more affordable for the shareholders. More generally, Monica Brown in UCLA Anderson Review reviews factors that drive the links between executive and board compensation, including the labor market value of CEOs and board members, nonfinancial incentives for board members, and the potential profitability of projects. Finally, a post published at Columbia Law School explains that the pivotal aspect of board contract design revolves around how liability burdens are allocated within the leadership team.

The articles are below:

• "Board Mandates and Scarcity of Qualified Directors: Unveiling an Overlooked Perspective",
  FinReg Blog, January 28, 2025 
• "The Role of Board-of-Directors Pay in Effective Corporate Investing" by Monica Brown,
  UCLA Anderson Review, November 26, 2024 
• "How Directors’ Liability Protection Can Affect the Quality of Company Projects",
  Columbia Law School Blue Sky Blog, March 22, 2024 

The featured working paper is a joint work with Beatrice Michaeli (UCLA) and is available at SSRN. To date, it has been presented, among others, at MIT Sloan School of Management and Dartmouth Tuck School of Business.