Is pay related to performance in the Netherlands? An analysis of Dutch executive compensation

This paper analyzes the characteristics of Dutch pay arrangements. We show that (1) studying executive compensation outside the Anglo-American countries adds insights to the pay for performance literature, (2) pay for performance relations are different for various types of executives and for various compensation components, (3) attention to the methodological treatment of conditional stock (option) grants is important, and (4) researchers should go beyond stock market performance indicators to detect the performance relatedness of pay. All in all, a myriad of pay-performance relationships has been found for the Dutch case, when the above is accounted for.