"Short-termism'' of executives has recently attracted a lot of public attention. This paper develops a novel measure of CEO compensation duration and studies how it affects corporate risk taking. This measure is constructed using grant-level data of CEO compensation and reflects vesting schedules for stock grants and expiration dates for option grants. I use grants awarded many years before the measurement period as an exogenous component of compensation duration. The results show that longer pay duration is associated with higher firm risk, measured by stock return volatility, idiosyncratic stock return volatility, and analyst forecast dispersion. Additional tests show that higher risk is not associated with higher level of investment or with higher financial leverage. At the same time, higher pay duration increases the amount of equity financing and reduces earnings manipulation.