Hi everyone,

for the replication of the following study: Bugeja, M., Matolcsy, Z.P., and Spiropoulos, H. 2012. Is there a gender gap in CEO compensation? Journal of Corporate Finance 18 (4): 849-959
, I need a control variable (Log(Std3RET) which is the standard deviation of common stock returns measured over the 3 previous years. However, to me it is not clear what they exactly do to get this variable. I already calculated the returns for all the periods . Do I have to take the average of the returns for the previous three years and then take the standard deviation of this? Or do I take the sum of the returns of the previous three years and then calculate the standard deviation? I would really appreciate your help. My data range is from 2011-2019, so therefore for this variable, I calculated the returns for 2008-2016.

Kind regards,
Dillon Steijn
Tilburg University