We document that executives working at firms perceived negatively in light of social norms, such as tobacco, gambling and alcohol, earn a significant compensation premium. The premium compensates for personal costs executives bear due to their employer's negative public perception and include: (i) a reduced likelihood these CEOs will serve as directors on other firms’ boards, which associates with lower executives’ social status, and (ii) impaired job mobility as employers shun stigmatized executives. The compensation premium is not explained by higher managerial skill required in firms we investigate, higher employment contract risk, political capital, litigation risk, or differences in corporate governance quality, and robust to endogeneity concerns. Our results highlight the significant impact job-related social stigma has on executive compensation.

Research suggesting the existence of the accrual anomaly runs into the issue that risk serves as a competing explanation for abnormal returns. This paper proposes a novel approach to distinguish between risk and anomaly explanations for the negative association between accruals and returns. The intuition is that high-risk stocks should experience relatively high and low returns more often than low-risk stocks. Thus, a variable that has the opposite correlations with high returns than with low returns is unlikely to capture risk, which points toward an anomaly. The paper implements this perspective via two logistic regressions predicting relatively high and low returns. Controlling for standard risk measures, we document that low accruals increase the probability of large positive returns, but reduce the likelihood of large negative returns. This finding is inconsistent with the prediction that accruals reflect risk and supports the hypothesis that the accrual “anomaly” is indeed an anomaly.