What Information Does 'Compensation Actually Paid' Provide?

We are the first to investigate what information is provided in “Compensation Actually Paid” (CAP) in the SEC’s newly required “Pay versus Performance Disclosure”. We find that change in stock price during the year explains a significant portion of the difference between CAP and total compensation, but incorporating the outstanding equity portfolio with stock price change, because it is the basis for change in value of what the executive earned, explains almost two-thirds of the difference. We provide three methods for estimating CAP based on machine readable data, allowing researchers a way to estimate the new information in CAP (information that can only be provided in the disclosures) to examine new and important research questions as a greater time-series of data becomes available.