A dynamic analysis of executive stock options: Determinants and consequences

We investigate the determinants of executive stock options (ESOs) and their impact on risky investment and subsequent firm performance in a dynamic setting. We find that, first, the dynamic response of ESOs to growth opportunity and risk is positive and lasts for two to three years. Second, the dynamic response of risky investments to option compensation is positive but converges to zero after three years. More importantly, the positive effect of ESOs on risky investments is observed when CEOs' personal risk-aversion is taken into account. Third, accounting performance responds positively to the risky, option-induced investment, but the dynamic effect lasts only for one year. Meanwhile, when managers undertake more risky investments than what ESOs imply, accounting performance responds negatively to the over-investment.     

Capital Structure, Compensation and Incentives

This article illustrates an incentive-aligning role of debtin the presence of optimal compensation contracts. Owing toinformation asymmetry, value-maximizing compensation contractsallow managerial rents following high investment outcomes. Themanager has an incentive to increase these rents by choosinginvestments that generate greater information asymmetry. Anaptly chosen debt level mitigates this incentive, because investmentsthat generate greater information asymmetry have more volatileoutcomes. The greater volatility would make the debt risky,causing the shareholders to focus on high outcomes and thereforecompensation contracts that reduce managerial rents. At theoptimum, the manager avoids opportunistic investments, and theshareholders offer value-maximizing compensation contracts.Empirically, the analysis predicts a negative relationship betweenleverage and market-to-book that is reversed at extreme market-to-bookratios, a negative relationship between leverage and profitability,a negative relationship between leverage and pay-for-performance,and a positive relationship between pay-for-performance andinvestment opportunities.     

Termination risk and managerial risk taking

We test the hypothesis that managers who face a high termination risk make less risky investments than the managers who face a low termination risk. A 10% increase in our measure of termination risk is associated with a 5%–23% decline in stock returns volatility for the median firm in our sample. We also find that for CEOs who are more likely to be fired in the event of investment failure, the inhibiting effect of termination risk appears to offset the positive effect of convexity of managerial compensation on managerial risk taking. These results are robust to alternative definitions of forced turnover and various measures of firm performances.     

Overconfidence,Compensation Contracts,and Capital Budgeting

A risk‐averse manager's overconfidence makes him less conservative. As a result, it is cheaper for firms to motivate him to pursue valuable risky projects. When compensation endogenously adjusts to reflect outside opportunities, moderate levels of overconfidence lead firms to offer the manager flatter compensation contracts that make him better off. Overconfident managers are also more attractive to firms than their rational counterparts because overconfidence commits them to exert effort to learn about projects. Still, too much overconfidence is detrimental to the manager since it leads him to accept highly convex compensation contracts that expose him to excessive risk.     

Leverage, volatility and executive stock options

This paper studies how an optimal wage contract can be implemented using stock options, and derives the properties of the optimal contract with stock options. Specifically, we show how the exercise price and the size of the option grant should change in response to changes in exogenous parameters. First, for a fixed exercise price of executive stock options, the size of the option grant decreases in the riskiness of a desired investment policy, decreases in the volatility of return from the risky project, and increases in leverage. Second, for a fixed size of the option grant, the optimal exercise price of managerial stock options increases in the riskiness of a desired investment policy, increases in the volatility of return from the risky project, and decreases in leverage. Several empirical predictions are drawn from these conclusions regarding the pay-performance sensitivity of management compensation.     

Equity Risk Incentives and Corporate Tax Aggressiveness

This study examines equity risk incentives as one determinant of corporate tax aggressiveness. Prior research finds that equity risk incentives motivate managers to make risky investment and financing decisions, since risky activities increase stock return volatility and the value of stock option portfolios. Aggressive tax strategies involve significant uncertainty and can impose costs on both firms and managers. As a result, managers must be incentivized to engage in risky tax avoidance that is expected to generate net benefits for the firm and its shareholders. We predict that equity risk incentives motivate managers to undertake risky tax strategies. Consistent with this prediction, we find that larger equity risk incentives are associated with greater tax risk and the magnitude of this effect is economically significant. Our results are robust across four measures of tax risk, but do not vary across several proxies for strength of corporate governance. We conclude that equity risk incentives are a significant determinant of corporate tax aggressiveness.     

Motivating Innovation

Motivating innovation is important in many incentive problems. This paper shows that the optimal innovation‐motivating incentive scheme exhibits substantial tolerance (or even reward) for early failure and reward for long‐term success. Moreover, commitment to a long‐term compensation plan, job security, and timely feedback on performance are essential to motivate innovation. In the context of managerial compensation, the optimal innovation‐motivating incentive scheme can be implemented via a combination of stock options with long vesting periods, option repricing, golden parachutes, and managerial entrenchment.     

Efficient Signalling with Dividends,Investment, and Stock Repurchases

The efficient mix of dissipative dividends, investments in real and financial assets, and repurchases of stock is computed for a continuum of firms with inside information about the return on risky real assets. In the efficient signalling equilibrium, the representative firm optimally distributes dividends, invests in risky real assets to maximize net present value, holds no financial securities, and sells new stock in the market. This firm finances its value-maximizing investment first from internal funds and second from stock sold to new investors.     

Investor pricing of CEO equity incentives

The main purpose of this paper is to explore CEO compensation in the form of stock and options. The objective of CEO compensation is to better align CEO-shareholder interests by inducing CEOs to make more optimal (albeit risky) investment decisions. However, recent research suggests that these incentives have a significant down-side (i.e., they motivate executives to manipulate reported earnings and lower information quality). Given the conflict between the positive CEO-shareholder incentive alignment effect and the dysfunctional information quality effect, it is an open empirical question whether CEO equity incentives increase firm value. We examine whether CEO equity incentives are priced in the firm-specific ex ante equity risk premium over the 1992–2007 time period. Our analysis controls for two potential structural changes over this time period. The first is the 1995 Delaware Supreme Court ruling which increased protection from takeovers (and decreased risk) for Delaware incorporated firms. The second is the 2002 Sarbanes–Oxley Act which impacted corporate risk taking, equity incentives, and earnings management. Collectively, our findings suggest that CEO equity incentives, despite being associated with lower information quality, increase firm value through a cost of equity capital channel.     

Risk-shifting and the regulation of bank CEOs’ compensation

This paper analyzes the effects of two regulatory mechanisms, namely a regulation of the structure of bank CEOs incentive pay and sanctions for the CEOs of failed banks, on bank risk shifting. We extend a standard model of CEO compensation by incorporating leverage and an investment decision. To the extent that bank depositors and creditors are even partially protected by public guarantees, we show that it is in the interests of bank shareholders to choose more risky investments than would be socially optimal, and therefore to design a CEO contract with excessive risk taking incentives. Thus, we argue that current corporate governance arrangements in the banking sector are not efficient. In this setting, we show that putting in place one of the aforementioned mechanisms could yield the socially optimal outcome at no cost. We also identify some limitations and potential perverse effects of these mechanisms.     

Leveraged superannuation

Rules governing superannuation investments are made with respect to investment‐specific risks, rather than overall portfolio risks. In particular, legislation prohibits borrowing except in specific circumstances and on a non‐recourse basis. We model the distribution of leveraged portfolio outcomes for a representative investor, accounting for their age‐earnings profile, differing taxation of dividends, capital gains and franking credits, and the volatility of equity returns and interest rates. With explicit portfolio modelling, there is no need to categorize specific investments as ‘too risky’ on a stand‐alone basis. We show that leverage is likely to enhance retirement outcomes for investors with low risk aversion.     

Stock option vesting conditions,CEO turnover,and myopic investment

Corporations have been criticized for providing executives with excessive incentives to focus on short-term performance. This paper shows that investment in short-term projects has beneficial effects in that it provides early feedback about Chief Executive Officer (CEO) talent, which leads to more efficient replacement decisions. Due to the threat of CEO turnover, the optimal design of stock option vesting conditions in executive compensation is more subtle than conventional views suggest. For example, I show that long vesting periods can backfire and induce excessive short-term investments. The study generates new empirical predictions regarding the determinants and impacts of stock option vesting terms in optimal contracting.     

Compensation peer crash risks and corporate own investments: New evidences from U.S. stock markets

This study, employing US listed firms with compensation peer disclosures, investigates the impact of compensation and industry peer stock price crash risks on firms' own investments. We document three new evidences in the examination. First, we find that firms' own investments are positively affected by compensation peer crash risks but not industry peers. Second, we show that firms' own investments are explained by compensation peer crash risks only. Third, we demonstrate that the compensation peer crash risks and firms' own investments relation is positively moderated by corporate governance. Besides, additional analysis suggests that peers' incentive effect is a possible explanation to the positive compensation peer crash risks and firms' own investments relation.     

Top-Management Compensation and Capital Structure

The interrelationship between top-management compensation and the design and mix of external claims issued by a firm is studied. The optimal managerial compensation structures depend on not only the agency relationship between shareholders and management, but also the conflicts of interests which arise in the other contracting relationships for which the firm serves as a nexus. We analyze in detail the optimal management compensation for the cases when the external claims are (1) equity and risky debt, and (2) equity and convertible debt. In addition to the role of aligning managerial incentives with shareholder interests, managerial compensation in a levered firm also serves as a precommitment device to minimize the agency costs of debt. The optimal management compensation derived has low pay-performance sensitivity. With convertible debt, instead of straight debt, the corresponding optimal managerial compensation has high pay-to-performance sensitivity. A negative relationship between pay-performance sensitivity and leverage is derived. Our results provide a reconciliation of the puzzling evidence of Jensen and Murphy ( 1990 ) with agency theory. Other testable implications include (1) a relationship between the risk premium in corporate bond yields and top-management compensation structures, and (2) the announcement effect of adoption of executive stock option plans on bond prices. The model yields implications for management compensation in banks and Federal Deposit Insurance reform. Our results explain the dynamics of top-management compensation in firms going through financial distress and reorganization.     

Corporate Control and the Choice of Investment Financing: The Case of Corporate Acquisitions

We test the proposition that corporate control considerations motivate the means of investment financing—cash (and debt) or stock. Corporate insiders who value control will prefer financing investments by cash or debt rather than by issuing new stock which dilutes their holdings and increases the risk of losing control. Our empirical results support this hypothesis: in corporate acquisitions, the larger the managerial ownership fraction of the acquiring firm the more likely the use of cash financing. Also, the previously observed negative bidders' abnormal returns associated with stock financing are mainly in acquisitions made by firms with low managerial ownership.     

Optimal strike prices of stock options for effort-averse executives

This paper evaluates the common practice of setting the strike prices of executive option plans at-the-money. Hall and Murphy [Hall, Brian, Murphy, Kevin J., 2000. Optimal exercise prices for executive stock options. American Economic Review 90 (2), 209–214] claim this practice to be optimal since it maximizes the sensitivity of compensation to firm performance. However, they do not incorporate effort and the possibility that managers are effort-averse into their model. We revisit this question while explicitly introducing these factors and allowing the reward package to include fixed wages, options, and stock grants. We simulate the manager’s effort choice and compensation as well as the value of shareholders’ equity under alternative compensation schemes, and identify schemes that are optimal. Our simulations indicate that, when abstracting from tax considerations, it is optimal to award managers with options that will most likely be highly valuable (i.e., substantially in-the-money) on their expiration date. Prior to 2006, the tax code and financial reporting standards provided incentives to award options that are closer to the money when issued than the options that were optimal in the absence of these considerations. Recent tax and reporting changes voided these incentives and thus we predict that these changes will induce firms to issue options with lower strike prices than those that were issued prior to 2006.     

What explains household stock holdings?

This is an empirical study of the determinants of stock holdings using data from the US Survey of Consumer Finances from 1992 to 2001. There is a great heterogeneity in the way households form their portfolios. Stock ownership is positively correlated with various measures of wealth, age, retirement savings, and having sought financial advice. It is negatively correlated with holdings of alternative risky investments, such as investments in private businesses, and with the willingness to undertake non-financial investments in the future. While we can predict reasonably well who holds stocks, we have less predictive power about the share of stocks owned by those who hold positive amounts.     

Real Investment Implications of Employee Stock Option Exercises

This paper examines a real cost of awarding employee stock options. Based on the observation that managers are extremely concerned about earnings-per-share dilution in equity related compensation, we predict and find that firms experiencing significant employee stock option (ESO) exercises shift resources away from real investments towards the repurchase of their own stocks. We further find weak evidence of a decline in subsequent firm performance (as measured by return on assets) for several years following the cut in discretionary investments as a result of stock option exercises, though this result is sensitive to the metric used to measure performance. Collectively, our findings indicate that ESO exercises potentially impose a real cost on the firm in terms of foregone investment opportunities.     

住房公积金与家庭风险金融资产投资——基于2013年CHFS的实证研究

作为我国重要的住房保障制度,住房公积金对家庭风险金融资产投资的影响鲜有研究。本文基于中国家庭金融调查(CHFS)数据,采用probit和tobit模型,检验住房公积金对家庭风险金融资产投资的影响。实证结果表明,住房公积金能显著提高有房家庭风险金融资产投资的可能性和投资比重,但是对无房家庭的风险金融资产投资则无显著影响。研究其影响机制发现,住房公积金会提高家庭可支配收入、增加户主风险偏好,从而促进家庭风险金融资产投资。本文研究结论对完善住房公积金制度、引导居民家庭合理投资风险金融资产和实现多渠道增加居民财产性收入有借鉴意义。     

LEVERAGE,RISK-SHIFTING INCENTIVE,AND STOCK-BASED COMPENSATION

Outstanding risky debt provides risk-shifting incentives for managers fully aligned with stockholders. Earlier research shows that the risk-shifting incentive can be eliminated by using a stock-based compensation design to align managers' and stockholders' interests. I show that stock options as well as compensation designs that align managers' and bondholders' interests eliminate the risk-shifting incentive. Although a stock-based compensation design is not a unique mechanism to eliminate the pure risk-shifting incentive, it is essential where managers of levered firms are known to consume a portion of the investment outlay as perquisites.