Gender and CEO Compensation

The gender pay gap issues have long been debated. Prior research has shown significant or insignificant relations between gender differences on pay gap. This paper focuses on studying the relation of CEO gender on CEO compensation. We examine whether gender is related to both base salary and total compensation of CEOs. Further, by controlling for firm-fixed effect, we are able to come close to better understand the relation between gender and CEO compensation. In essence, firm-fixed effect analysis allows us to analyze whether in a particular company the gender of the CEO matters. Hence, whether a firm that employed a male CEO and a female CEO at some time during the sample period has shown variation in compensation that can lead us to suspect that it discriminated in compensation between males and females.The result of our paper finds no significant impact of gender difference on either base salary or total compensation of CEOs. However, there is a difference that we find in the salary mix - Female CEOs are statistically paid more in terms of base salary, which means the performance-based compensation of female CEOs is lower than their male counterparts