The Impact of Financial and Tax Reporting Incentives on Option Grants to Canadian CEOs*

This study explores the effects of financial and tax reporting incentives on options granted to chief executive officers in Canada. Extant studies with a similar objective (Yermack 1995; Matsunaga 1995) explore predominantly nonqualified U.S. option grants that are deductible to the extent that the options are in the money at the time of exercise. In contrast, Canadian firms do not get a tax deduction for their stock option grants at any time. In both countries, no expense is recorded for financial reporting purposes. As a result, the financial reporting and tax reporting trade‐off is more pronounced in the Canadian setting of this study compared with the U.S. setting. We measure option granting behavior as the ratio of the Black‐Scholes value of stock option grants to the sum of cash compensation and the value of stock option grants. Using a sample of 806 firm‐year observations during the period 1993‐95, we find that observed option grants are significantly correlated with proxies for short‐run financial reporting incentives. We also find evidence that option granting behavior is correlated with proxies for tax incentives.     

Is Financial Literacy Dangerous? Financial Literacy,Behavioral Factors,and Financial Choices of Households

Using original purpose-built 2018 Japanese survey data, we estimate the financial behaviors and attitudes of households. We find that financial literacy plays an important and consistent role in financial decision-making. However, the actual behaviors are counter-intuitive: people with high levels of financial literacy tend to take too many risks, overborrow, and hold naive financial attitudes. That is, financial literacy tends to cause people to become daring and reckless toward some financial aspects. By contrast, financially literate people are better at retirement planning and are indifferent to gambling. Preferences such as risk and loss aversions and discount factors, also play a role in financial choices.     

Non-financial Determinants of Retirement: A Literature Review

Retirement is often concentrated at specific ages—in particular the ‘normal retirement age’ and an ‘early retirement age’. Financial incentives cannot fully explain this. Moreover, the participation effect of a higher normal retirement age importantly exceeds the encompassing income effect. Based on a literature survey, we conclude that social norms, default options, and reference-dependent utility are likely explanations for the individual propensity to retire at specific retirement ages. Further empirical research on non-financial determinants of retirement is needed to fully understand individual retirement behavior.     

Saving for retirement: The U.S. case

This paper discusses the personal saving behavior and the retirement behavior of households in the United States. It shows that a typical U.S. household owns virtually no financial savings even at ages approaching retirement. Most personal saving is in the form of housing equity, which, however, is not decumulated during retirement and thus cannot be counted on as retirement wealth. Saving for retirement is largely conducted by corporations and government through pension plans and Social Security. It also presents evidence indicating a relatively large impact on the Individual Retirement Account program on personal savings. The paper casts doubts on the applicability of the pure life-cycle saving hypothesis for the U.S. households. J. Japan. Int. Econ., December 1988, 2(4), pp. 385–416. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138; and National Bureau of Economic Research, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138.     

Retirement and health: Evidence from China

One typical feature of China's pension system is that retirement is mandatory. By exploiting the exogenous change created by this mandatory retirement policy, we use the mandatory retirement age as an instrument for retirement status to examine the effect of retirement on individual health using data from the China Health and Nutrition Survey (CHNS). Our main finding is that the probability of “fair” or “poor” self-reported health among white-collar workers decreases by 34 percentage point after retirement. This result is generally robust to different model specifications, alternative measures of health, and different subsamples. In addition, we deliver evidence that increased health-related exercises and the cultivation of a better lifestyle are two possible channels through which retirement affects health.     

Can Simple Informational Nudges Increase Employee Participation in a 401(k) Plan?

We report results from a field experiment in which a randomized subset of newly hired workers at a large financial institution received a flyer containing information about the employer's 401(k) plan and the value of contributions compounding over a career. Younger workers who received the flyer were significantly more likely to begin contributing to the plan relative to their peers in the control group. Many workers do not participate in their employers' supplemental retirement savings programs, even though these programs offer substantial tax advantages and immediate returns due to matching contributions. From a survey of new hires, we find that many workers choose not to contribute to the plan because they have other financial priorities. However, some nonparticipants lack the financial literacy to appreciate the benefit. These findings indicate that simple informational interventions can nudge workers to participate in retirement saving plans and enhance individual well‐being and retirement income security.     

The impact of retirement on household consumption in Japan

Using monthly data from the Japanese Family Income and Expenditure Survey, we examine the impact of retirement on household consumption. We find little evidence of an immediate change in consumption at retirement, on average, in Japan. However, we find a decrease in consumption at retirement for low income households that is concentrated in food and work-related consumption. The availability of substantial retirement bonuses to a large share of Japanese retirees may help smooth consumption at retirement. We find that those households that are more likely to receive such bonuses experience a short-run consumption increase at retirement. However, among households that are less likely to receive a retirement bonus, we find that consumption decreases at retirement.     

Too old to plan? Age identity and financial planning among the older population of China

We study how age identity (measured by the difference between chronological age and perceived old age), influences financial planning among the older population (60+) in China. Using data from three waves of the China Longitudinal Aging Social Survey, we show that individuals who feel younger have a significantly higher probability of making financial plans. That such an effect exists in sub-samples divided by age and retirement status implies the relevance of financial planning even for individuals with advanced ages. It is consistent with the hypothesis that old individuals who feel younger have higher perceived cognitive abilities and hence higher motivation to make financial plans. However, an unfavorable perception of social aging culture moderates such a positive effect. Age identity can further impact the downstream economic behaviors of saving and investing, either directly or indirectly, through financial planning. Finally, a younger age identity also increases an individual's willingness to internalize the responsibility of eldercare. Our findings imply that it is important to consider individuals' age identity when crafting and implementing old-age policies.     

“撤县设区”如何影响财政收支?——基于激励视角的再研究

文章从激励差异视角重新考察"撤县设区"的财政收支效应。基于广东的区划改革和转移支付政策实践构造一个"准试验"样本，样本期内既有"撤县设区"案例，也涉及省财政对县区激励性转移支付政策的重大调整，因而能够区分二者对财政收支的影响。分析过程包括两步，首先，基于倾向得分匹配和双重差分（PSD-DID）方法，发现"撤县设区"降低了县区财政收支增速；其次，依据激励性转移支付政策变化构建三重差分（DIDID）考察"撤县设区"政策效应的产生机制，发现财政激励差异是导致"撤县设区"政策效应的原因。文章为检验"撤县设区"等行政区划调整如何影响当地发展提出一种识别机制，并发现激励落差是导致"撤县设区"影响财政收支的背后机制，而"撤县设区"本身的影响不显著。     

Financial Incentives and Herding: Evidence from Two Online Experiments

Social conformity and information-based herding have been studied extensively in the social sciences, but there is little experimental evidence on how financial incentives impact the likelihood that an individual will follow the crowd. We present the results of a pair of two-stage online experiments where we use answers to and confidence about trivia questions—with and without information about the choices of others—to test the impact of financial incentives on an individual's likelihood of engaging in herd behavior (i.e., switching their answer to the most popular answer when it is revealed). We find strong evidence that individuals are more likely to herd when there are financial incentives to be correct, suggesting that individuals are less likely to rely on their own beliefs and judgments when the stakes are higher. We also exploit the unique design of our experiments to show that in the absence of information about others' choices, men report higher levels of confidence than women.     

The Effect of Pension Plan Type on Retirement Age: Distinguishing Plan Incentives from Career Length Preferences

This study uses the Retirement Confidence Survey of College and University Faculty, 2005,to examine the impact of pension plan incentives on retirement age and to understand how the widespread transition from defined benefit (DB) to defined contribution (DC) plans has affected workers. Incentives stemming from differences in pension wealth accrual patterns between DB and DC plans directly induce up to a one‐year difference in expected retirement age and are indirectly responsible for up to a two‐year difference due to workers sorting into plans based on preferences over career length. The results imply that failing to account for worker sorting leads to an overestimation of the transition's effect on the average retirement age of Americans. In addition, the findings suggest that individuals choose retirement plans to diversify retirement income, which has implications for Social Security reform.     

Is Life Annuity an Effective Tool for Managing Longevity Risk in Korea?*

We examine optimal life annuity planning for Korean pre‐retirees with a focus on the optimal timing of annuitization. The objective is to maximize the expected total utility from consumption during the retirement period. Benchmark cases with various values for net wealth, proportion of net wealth that is annuitized at the time of retirement and level of risk aversion are applied. We confirm that life annuity is an effective tool for managing longevity risk in Korea and it is important to select the timing of annuitization carefully to maximize the expected total utility and to avoid unnecessary financial ruin during retirement. In addition, we find that the optimal annuity strategy is more beneficial for those with lower levels of wealth than others.     

Asset or burden? Impact of children on parents’ retirement

If parents receive financial support in retirement from their children, having more children with higher earning power may expedite their retirement. On the other hand, retirement may be delayed if parents are burdened with educational expenses for children. We empirically investigate how the quantity and the education of children influence their parents’ retirement decisions. Due to the endogeneity of childrearing in the retirement decision, we employ the instrumental variable method with twin births and child deaths as instruments. We find that parents retire earlier when they have more children and better educated children and they receive a significant amount of transfers from children.     

医生薪酬激励的行为和实验经济学研究进展

医疗卫生行业供给侧改革的一个重要方面是医生的诊疗服务,而医生的行为受到薪酬支付方式及其激励机制的影响。近年来实验研究方法在卫生经济学领域得到了广泛运用,并在医生薪酬激励方面取得一系列重要的研究成果。主要包括关于按服务项目付费、按人头付费和固定工资三种基本的医疗行业薪酬支付方式的实验研究,以及对绩效工资这一经济性激励手段和公开报告等非经济性激励手段展开的实验研究。文章围绕基本支付方式、经济性激励和非经济性激励等三种影响医生行为的薪酬激励机制,对相关的行为和实验经济学研究进行了较为系统地梳理。同时总结了从现有的行为和实验研究中可能得到的启示,并展望了未来可能的研究方向。     

Blockholder Exit Threats and Financial Reporting Quality

Recent theoretical and empirical studies suggest that blockholders (shareholders with ownership ≥ 5 percent) exert governance through the threat of exit. Blockholders have strong incentives to gather private information and sell their shares when managers are perceived to underperform. To prevent blockholders from selling their shares and the firm from suffering a stock price decline, managers align their actions with the interests of shareholders. As a result of the greater manager‐shareholder alignment, managers' actions are more likely to be in shareholders' best interest, and consequently there is less need for managers to manipulate earnings. Consistent with these predictions from economic theory, we find evidence that as exit threat increases, firms have higher financial reporting quality. Theory also predicts that the impact of blockholders' exit threat on financial reporting quality (FRQ) should increase as the manager's wealth is tied more closely to the stock price, and this is what we find. Our study contributes to the research on the impact of shareholders on FRQ and to an emerging literature on the impact of blockholders in financial markets. Blockholders play an important role in managers' reporting outcomes through their actions as informed investors.     

Us Retirement Income System

In the United States, retirement income is supplied throughthe combination of a relatively modest, contributory socialinsurance programme; employer-provided (increasingly definedcontribution savings) programmes; and individual retirementsavings. The public programme supplies the vast majority ofthe income of the poorer half of the aged population; only therichest 20 per cent receive more from employer plans than fromthe public programme. Projections show that the public programmewill have financial problems in the 2030s. Thereafter, revenueswould have to be increased by a third or benefits cut by a quarterto restore financial balance. Despite widespread angst aboutthe impact of longer lifespans and the retirement of the baby-boomgeneration, however, there is little serious discussion abouthow either the public- or private-sector programmes should beadjusted. In 2005, President Bush failed to generate significantpublic support for a plan partially to privatize the public-sectorprogramme. Footnotes ¹ E-mail address: lthompso{at}ui.urban.org     

财政奖励政策对农村金融机构信贷行为的影响——基于涉农贷款增量奖励政策的实证研究

涉农贷款增量奖励政策是将财政政策与信贷政策有机结合,发挥财政资金杠杆作用,促进金融资源优化配置,建立财政促进金融支农的一项重要举措.本文利用新疆70个县的涉农贷款、农户贷款、奖励资金数据,分别构造了自回归分布滞后（ADL）模型和面板数据（Panel Data）模型,并对财政奖励政策的金融机构信贷行为影响效应进行了检验,然后通过农村金融需求问卷调查结果对金融机构信贷行为的影响进行了进一步验证.结果表明：第一,财政奖励政策对县域金融机构涉农贷款和农户贷款的发放存在正向激励作用,但多个县域个体并未表现出显著的激励效应;第二,财政资金奖励政策对农户和农村企业的信贷需求满足度均有明显影响,但对农村信贷资金价格并未表现出显著的影响.     

Trade‐offs between Tax and Financial Reporting Benefits: Evidence from Purchase Price Allocations in Taxable Acquisitions

Under U.S. GAAP, firms recognize assets acquired in business combinations at fair value. Similarly, in taxable asset acquisitions firms adjust the tax basis of assets to fair value. Managers can increase the present value of future tax savings by allocating a greater portion of the purchase price to shorter‐lived assets than to goodwill or indefinite‐lived intangibles. However, this tax planning strategy imposes a financial reporting cost because it reduces book income following the acquisition; all else equal, allocations to shorter‐lived depreciable assets increase book depreciation expense, whereas allocations to goodwill and indefinite‐lived intangibles do not increase book amortization expense. We exploit the features of taxable asset acquisitions to investigate trade‐offs between tax and financial reporting incentives. We predict and find greater allocations to depreciable versus intangible assets when managers have strong tax incentives and weak financial reporting incentives. However, we also find that strong financial reporting incentives moderate the effects of strong tax incentives. These findings contribute new evidence to the literature on the importance of nontax costs in tax planning decisions     

A Cross‐national Comparison of R&D Expenditure Decisions: Tax Incentives and Financial Constraints*

We provide evidence on the impact of tax incentives and financial constraints on corporate R&D expenditure decisions. We contribute to extant research by comparing R&D expenditures in the United States and Canada, thereby exploiting the differences in the two countries' R&D tax credit mechanisms and generally accepted accounting principles. The two tax incentive mechanism designs are consistent with differing views of the degree of financial constraints faced by firms in these economies. Our sample also allows us to explore the effects of capitalizing R&D on Canadian firms. Employing a matched design, we document relations between tax credit incentives and R&D spending consistent with both Canadian and U.S. public companies responding as though they are not financially constrained. We estimate that the Canadian credit system induces, on average, $1.30 of additional R&D spending per dollar of taxes forgone while the U.S. system induces, on average, $2.96 of additional spending. We also find that firms that capitalize R&D costs in Canada spend, on average, 18 percent more on R&D. Collectively, this evidence is important to the ongoing debates in both countries concerning the appropriate design of incentives for R&D and is consistent with the assumptions found in the U.S. tax credit system, but not those found in the Canadian system.     

The Impact of an Increase in the Legal Retirement Age on the Effective Retirement Age

We analyze the impact of an increase in the legal retirement age on the effective retirement age in the Netherlands. We do this by means of a dynamic programming model for the retirement behavior of singles. The model is applied to new administrative data that contain very accurate and detailed information on individual incomes and occupational pension entitlements. Our model is able to capture the main patterns observed in the data. We observe that as individuals get older their labor supply declines considerably and this varies by age and gender. We simulate the current pension reform which aims at gradually increasing the legal retirement age from 65 to 67 and a hypothetical reform that immediately increases the retirement age to 67. The simulation results show a small impact on the effective retirement age for the first reform and a bigger impact for the second reform. Respectively, individuals postpone their retirement by \(<\) 1 month and 7 months on average; while differences across individuals mainly depend on their gender and health status.