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    rTSR: When Do Relative Performance Metrics Capture Relative Performance?
    21 May 2019Working Paper Summaries

    rTSR: When Do Relative Performance Metrics Capture Relative Performance?

    by Paul Ma, Jee-Eun Shin, and Charles C. Y. Wang
    Managers are increasingly evaluated based on relative performance metrics, particularly relative total shareholder returns (rTSR). This paper finds that the majority of firms that tie CEO performance-based contracts to rTSR do a remarkable job of filtering out the systematic risk in TSR. However, a significant portion of firms make relatively poor choices in the design and selection of rTSR, a result of weak governance and an overreliance on compensation consultants.
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    Author Abstract

    Relative total shareholder returns (rTSR) has become the predominant metric to isolate managers' idiosyncratic performance. Among firms that explicitly use rTSR in relative performance contracts, 60%—those that choose specific peers as benchmarks—select rTSR metrics that do a remarkable job of filtering out the systematic component of returns in adherence to the informativeness principle. However, firms that choose index-based benchmarks retain substantial systematic noise in their rTSR metrics. We document that the selection of noisy benchmarks is associated with compensation consultants' preferences, which are uncorrelated with observable firm attributes. Firms with weak governance are more likely to choose indexes, not because of opportunism, but because they do not adequately scrutinize outside experts' advice. Collectively, our findings provide a new explanation for why some executives are evaluated based on systematic noise and novel evidence on how compensation consultants can impact firms.

    Paper Information

    • Full Working Paper Text
    • Working Paper Publication Date: April 2019
    • HBS Working Paper Number: HBS Working Paper #19-112
    • Faculty Unit(s): Accounting and Management
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    Charles C.Y. Wang
    Charles C.Y. Wang
    Glenn and Mary Jane Creamer Associate Professor of Business Administration
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