Dilution/incentive effects associating with employee bonuses in Taiwan: Empirical findings under two regimes

Taiwan's regulation used to treat employee bonuses as one of after-tax-earnings distributing items. In response to the anti-dumping charges launched by American manufacturers against Taiwanese SRAM firms, Taiwan Securities and Futures Commission issues a new directive on January 30, 2003 which requires the listed companies to disclose pro forma EPS after deducting employee bonuses and director/supervisor compensations, that is, implicitly recognizing employee bonus as an expense item in annual reports. This study examines the valuation implication of mandatory disclosure of employee bonus related information after the issuance of the new directive by examining whether stock price movements can reflect such institutional changes. The empirical findings are in conformity with the expectation: Before the issuance of Directive No. 457, the market tends to overestimate the incentive effect arising from the employee bonuses; after the issuance of Directive No. 457, the market reacts negatively once employee bonuses are recognized implicitly as operating expenses. This study implements several diagnostic checks and demonstrates that our empirical results are robust to various specifications.     

Base Salaries,Bonus Payments,and Work Absence among Managers in a German Company

This paper provides scarce insider econometric evidence on the structure of management compensation and on the incentive effects of fixed base salaries and bonus payments. Six years of personnel data of 177 managers in a German company are analyzed with special emphasis on the highest achievable bonuses under a Management‐by‐Objectives (MBO) incentive scheme. The main finding of panel negative binomial regressions is that higher achievable bonus payments are correlated with fewer absent working days, which supports the incentive effect of performance pay for managers. The fixed base salary component is, however, not significantly correlated with managers’ work absence.     

Managerial compensation and incentives in for-profit and nonprofit hospitals

Differential economic behavior of for-profit and nonprofit institutionscan be manifest in both output and input markets. When behaviorin output markets is difficult to observe, behavior in inputmarkets can be useful proxies. We examine monetary compensationand its composition between base salary and bonus, and the associatedincentive structures, in the U.S. hospital industry. Our datapermit controlling for interinstitutional differences in thescope and complexity of jobs having the same titles, as wellas differences in organization size and other variables. Wefind (1) total monetary compensation for the two top executivejobs is substantially higher in the for-profit sector; and (2)the composition of compensation as between base salary and bonusdiffers materially across forms of organization, bonuses beingabsolutely and relatively greater in the for-profit sector.Particularly noteworthy is the finding that for-profit hospitalsutilize compensation mechanisms that, by involving larger contingentcomponents, provide stronger incentives - greater rewards -as compared with nonprofit hospitals, for performance that ismore easily monitored. While our findings are consistent withmore than one model of comparative organizations differ in theirgoals and, hence, in the kinds of managers they demand and thereward structures they offer. Nonprofit organizations may pursueobjectives that reflect greater concern about collective goodsor other outputs that are more difficult to measure and reward.Alternatively, nonprofits, confronted by a nondistribution constrainton the payout of profit to managers, may lack incentives forefficiency, and so may pursue other goals such as a quiet life.Such differential objective functions, together with the differentialconstraints on the distribution of profit to managers, havetwo kinds of implications. (1) Nonprofit and for-profit organizationsmay attract different kinds of managers, especially at the toplevels, because nonprofits prefer working for a nonprofit organizationand, hence, may offer a lower supply price to them. (2) Thetwo types of organizations can be expected to offer differentialcomposition of compensation as between base salary and performance-basedbonus, providing different incentives for managers. Our analysisis positive in character, the goal being to identify systematicdifferences in organization behavior.     

Cost Behaviour of Chinese State-owned Manufacturing Enterprises in the 1980s

This paper aims to model the cost behaviour of Chinese state-owned enterprises in the 1980s. Given production autonomy and profit-related bonus incentives, state firms are expected to increase profits and therefore bonuses by changing their cost behaviours more rationally. However, since institutional constraints remain and distort the rational demand of the firm for input factors, the changes cannot go as far as expected by the standard neoclassical cost minimisation theory. Based on this, we derived a total cost function for Chinese state firms restricted by the government control over their total wage bills. We then test it using a panel data of 386 state manufacturing enterprises in the period 1983–87. It is found that the model predicted well. Despite the constraints, the reform did lead the firms to respond to both changes in factor prices in the directions expected by cost minimising behaviour and to bonus incentives to produce more efficiently.     

企业职工薪酬激励程度核算研究

职工薪酬激励程度和职工的努力程度均难以直接观察,这直接导致企业激励政策的盲目性.本文通过分析,提出企业薪酬激励程度核算方法,利用相关数据建构企业薪酬激励程度与企业增加值之间的回归模型,并结合有关激励模型确定企业职工最优薪酬激励程度,为企业制定薪酬激励政策提供参考依据.     

分工与员工合作制度研究

组织结构对员工有着深刻影响。是否采取工作专门化,与员工能力、工作性质、风险偏好、领导因素等有关。激励结构与团队成员是否合作存在着相互作用的关系。增加计件工资率会降低员工之间相互帮助行为;扩大团队奖金差距会降低员工对自身工作的努力程度。在员工努力行为可以观察到的情况下,只应对员工支付固定工资和团队奖金,就足以激励员工努力工作,并且有积极性帮助其他员工;在员工努力行为难以观察到的情况下,则需要以计件工资来激励员工努力工作。因此,需要扩大高风险员工的工作范围,对员工能力有差别的团队实施团队奖励,加强合作性评估,明确合作性——奖励之间的关系,加大团队奖金在能力强员工薪酬结构中所占的比重等。     

Informal incentive labour contracts and product market competition

This paper studies the dynamic interaction between product market competition and incentives against shirking. In contrast with standard results, efficiency wages paid by each firm can decrease when competition (i.e. the number of firms in the product market) increases. Discretionary bonuses, on the other hand, do not vary with competition. There is an upper threshold for the number of competing firms, however, above which such schemes are no longer sustainable as an equilibrium. Industry profits with bonuses are generally higher than with efficiency wages but, when information regarding firms’ misbehaviour flows at a low rate, a competition range exists for which firms can make a positive profit by only paying efficiency wages.     

An Experimental Study of Influences of Performance-Related Payments on Timing of Delegated Stock Purchases

Performance-related bonuses are important tools for investment organizations to incentivize stock traders. Yet, two experiments indicate that bonuses rewarding short-term performance may lead to worse timing of purchases. The authors propose that hyperbolic time discounting makes participants set lower aspired purchase prices for short-term (decreasing percentage) bonuses than for long-term (increasing percentage) bonuses. For this reason purchases are made earlier for decreasing than increasing percentage bonuses, earlier for decreasing than random prices, and earlier for high price volatility than for low price volatility. Neither purchases at the lowest price or highest bonus are attained. Hyperbolic time discounting may account for bubbles observed in experimental double-auction markets.     

Labour Mobility and Returns to Experience in Foreign Firms*

This paper uses Finnish linked employer–employee panel data to study whether employees are able to appropriate returns to knowledge accumulated in foreign‐owned firms when moving to domestic firms. The estimates indicate that highly educated employees earn a return to prior experience in a foreign‐owned firm, which is over and above the return to other previous experience. These employees do not appear to pay for the knowledge they accumulate in the form of lower starting wages in foreign‐owned firms.     

Staggered wages,unanticipated shocks and firms’ adjustments

This paper empirically investigates the employment and wage effects of contract staggering, i.e., the asynchronous and infrequent way in which wages adjust to changes in the economic environment. Using an identification strategy based on exogenous start dates of collective agreements around the Great Recession, we estimate the effect of increases in base wages on firms’ labor cost adjustments. Our analysis is based on a large employers-employees dataset merged to collective agreements in the Netherlands, a country in which collective bargaining is dominant and contract staggering is relatively pervasive. The main result is that staggered wage setting has no real effect on employment. We find significant employment losses only in sectors covered by contracts with much longer durations than those normally assumed in macroeconomic models featuring staggered wages. Instead, we show that firms adjust labor costs by curbing other pay components such as bonuses and benefits and incidental pay. The overall result supports the idea that wage rigidities are not the main source of employment fluctuations.     

我国创业投资的回报率及其影响因素

基于1999年到2003年间我国56个本土创业投资退出项目的数据,本文对我国创业投资退出项目的投资回报率及其影响因素进行了实证研究。结果表明:(1)国有创业投资机构退出项目的平均投资回报率显著低于非国有创业投资机构;(2)创业投资机构的资本规模与回报率呈显著负相关关系;(3)上海、深圳两地创业投资机构退出项目的回报率显著高于其他地区;(4)本土创业投资机构的从业时间、投资规模、投资周期、退出方式均与回报率没有显著相关关系。本文在此基础上提出了相关的政策建议。     

Location factors of international R&D activities: an econometric approach

A model is developed of the relation between adoption of an innovation by firms and firm size. Decision making is represented as a group assessment of the perceived ratio between expected returns after succesful introduction, and the risk that implementation will fail or will last too long to makc adoption worth while. In view of differences in thc assessment of uncertainty and corresponding demands on the perceived return-to-risk ratio, among influencers of decisions in the firm, decision making is taken as stochastic, with a probability of adoption related to (objective) net benefits, and probability of non-adoption related to risk. The model gives a new way of looking at the fact that small firms lag behind in the adoption of new technology. In contrast with previous models proposed by David and Davies the explanation has nothing to do with there being some critical size below which adoption is not profitable. The present model explains the adoption lag for smaller firms as the result of expected returns being proportional to size while risk of failed implementation is independent of size. The model is tested and estimated empirically on data for the adoption of computers in small scale retailing, in the Netherlands.     

Bonus pay for teachers,spatial sorting,and student achievement

Bonus pay policy for teachers in the U.S. is analyzed in this paper. We quantitatively argue that, because of the decentralized education finance system in the U.S., this policy may lead to higher teacher and household sorting across school districts. This then may lead to higher variance of achievement and lower mean achievement. Formally, we use an equilibrium political economy model of education at which households, heterogeneous in exogenously set income, and teachers, heterogeneous in exogenously set quality, are endogenously allocated across two school districts. Public education expenditures, which includes teachers’ wage payment and non-teacher related education spending, are financed through local income taxation. Income tax rate in each district is determined via majority voting. Achievement depends on the efforts chosen by teachers and non-teacher related education spending. Teacher efficiency wage per unit of quality is determined at the national teacher labor market. We first calibrate our benchmark model by matching certain statistics from the U.S. data. Then in a computational experiment, we introduce bonus pay for teachers which rises with average achievement. We find that for the recently observed level of average bonus pay (6.59% of average base salary), variance of achievement is 2.46% higher and mean achievement is 1.79% lower than the benchmark. Variance of achievement reaches its peak when average bonus pay is 14.06% and then it starts falling. Also, mean achievement always falls as average bonus pay rises.     

Firm entry deregulation,competition and returns to education and skill

This paper studies the effect of firm entry deregulation on the returns to skill and education. We exploit a comprehensive episode of entry deregulation, unique in the industrialized world, as a quasi-natural experiment. Using matched employer–employee data for the universe of workers and firms in Portugal, we show that increased product market competition, which resulted from deregulation, increased the returns to a university degree and the returns to skill. We verify that our results are not driven by changes in employment composition, and are unlikely to be driven by skill-biased technical change, or by workers who change skill levels after the deregulation.     

Bonus incentives and team effort levels: Evidence from the “Field”*

This study explores the effect of bonus incentive mechanisms with a focus on how such a scheme influences aggregate production levels of teams of workers, specifically. We identify this using data from a highly competitive setting in professional sport, which involves a unique tournament design rule in an elite European rugby competition. The modelling results demonstrate qualified evidence that introducing bonuses to encourage teams to score via the most-difficult, highest-reward mode, incentivizes teams to increase effort to earn the bonus, and without reducing production after the bonus is achieved.     

You Don't Always Get What You Pay For: Bonuses,Perceived Income and Effort

Abstract. Consider a principal–agent relationship in which more effort by the agent raises the likelihood of success. This paper provides conditions such that no success bonus induces the agent to exert more effort and the optimal contract is independent of success. Moreover, success bonuses may even reduce effort and thus the probability of success. The reason is that bonuses increase the perceived income of the agent and can hence reduce his willingness to exert effort. This perceived income effect has to be weighed against the incentive effect of the bonus. The tradeoff is determined by the marginal effect of effort on the success probability in relation to this probability itself (success hazard‐rate of effort). The paper also discusses practical implications of the finding.     

经理激励、负债与企业价值

已有研究表明,经理薪酬与负债都会影响企业价值。然而,作为激励机制的薪酬与作为约束机制的负债在影响企业价值上究竟存在何种关系,尽管文献在理论方面有所探讨,但缺乏相应的实证证据支持。以中国沪深两市2002—2008年间的A股上市公司作为研究样本,本文的实证检验结果表明,无论是以薪酬衡量的显性激励还是以在职消费衡量的隐性激励,经理激励和负债在对企业价值的影响上具有显著的替代关系;同时,这一关系在不同性质的企业中,以及不同市场化水平下具有一定的差异性。本文所得出的研究结论不仅丰富了资本结构、委托代理等相关理论,对于现实中的企业决策也具有较强启示意义。     

Wage settlements and wage setting: results from a multi-level model

Which dimensions of wage setting differ across establishments applying collective contracts and uncovered establishments? The empirical analysis reported here utilizes German linked employer–employee data for the years 1990, 1995 and 2001 and is restricted to workers without supervisory functions in larger manufacturing firms. Results show that the expected wage of an average worker is higher in firms applying collective contracts, while returns to human capital and the gender wage gap are reduced. Moreover, during the 1990s these effects became stronger.     

The disappearing size effect

In this paper, we use average monthly returns and monthly cross-sectional regressions to investigate the relation between returns and firm size. During the period 1963–1981, we find an annualized return difference between small and large firms over 13% compared to a negative 2% return differential since 1982. Removal of the smallest firms (less than $5 million market value) eliminates any statistically significant size effect during the sample period using a regression framework. Several explanations are proposed for the disappearance of the size effect. Our results imply that size should not be considered as a systematic proxy for risk.     

Financial innovation in the UK

This study employs a national survey of over 1100 British financial firms to ascertain the determinants of financial innovation and their sales success using the logit and the generalized Tobit models. We find that the likelihood of financial innovation rises with the size of financial firms, employee education, greater expenditure on research and development, the availability of finance and the extent to which firms cooperate with each other. Perceptions of economic risk and innovation costs are also influential. R&D, cooperation and human capital are the main variables driving the success of financial innovation, measured by the percentage share of innovations sold. Firms in London/the south have a significantly greater tendency to innovate, though Scotland also does well. Stock broking, fund management and related activities are more innovative than firms in the financial intermediation and pension/insurance sectors.