Earnings management,incentive contracts and private information acquisition

This paper analyzes the optimal design of compensation contracts in the presence of earnings management incentives, and its interplay with investors’ information acquisition decisions. We consider a setting in which compensation contract is based on both accounting earnings and stock price when an agent engages in predictable, pernicious earnings management and stock price is endogenously determined in a Noisy Rational Expectations Equilibrium (NREE) that reflects both the public information from reported earnings and a costly, noisy signal privately acquired by investors. We show that an increase in the precision of the firm’s financial reporting system could reduce the informativeness of stock price and exacerbate the agency problem by inducing lower productive effort and higher earnings management, implying that the firm may not choose a more precise financial reporting system.     

CEO optimism and incentive compensation

I study the effect of chief executive officer (CEO) optimism on CEO compensation. Using data on compensation in US firms, I provide evidence that CEOs whose option exercise behavior and earnings forecasts are indicative of optimistic beliefs receive smaller stock option grants, fewer bonus payments, and less total compensation than their peers. These findings add to our understanding of the interplay between managerial biases and remuneration and show how sophisticated principals can take advantage of optimistic agents by appropriately adjusting their compensation contracts.     

CEO incentive plans and corporate liquidation policy

To investigate CEOs' incentives to liquidate their firms, we examine the effects of insider ownership and compensation in stock options on 30 voluntary liquidation decisions by industrial firms in the period 1975–1986. We find that liquidation decisions are influenced by CEO incentive plans and increase shareholder value. Firms with more outside board members, smaller market-to-book ratios, and attempts by outsiders to gain control are more likely to be liquidated. Although few top executives of liquidating firms subsequently take comparable jobs, at least 41% of CEOs who downsize are made better off by liquidation.     

Work‐related perks,agency problems,and optimal incentive contracts

Work‐related perks, such as corporate jets, nice offices, and so forth, improve the tradeoff between incentives and insurance that determines the optimal incentive contract. We show that (i) such perks may be offered even if their direct consumption benefits are offset by their costs; (ii) they will be offered for free; (iii) agents in more uncertain production environments will receive more perks; (iv) senior executives should receive more perks; and (v) better corporate governance can lead to more perk consumption by CEOs. Our analysis also offers insights into firms' decisions about how much autonomy they should grant to their employees.     

Geographical relationships and CEO compensation contracts

In this paper, we empirically analyze the effects that the geographical relationships between chairman and CEO have on the latter’s compensation contracts,based...     

CEO incentive compensation and stock liquidity

Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting - We document that the CEO pay-for-performance incentive positively predicts firm’s stock liquidity. The evidence is consistent with the...     

Financial crisis and bank executive incentive compensation

We study the executive compensation structure in 14 of the largest U.S. financial institutions during 2000–2008. We focus on the CEO's purchases and sales of their bank's stock, their salary and bonus, and the capital losses these CEOs incur due to the dramatic share price declines in 2008. We consider three measures of risk-taking by these banks. Our results are mostly consistent with and supportive of the findings of Bebchuk, Cohen and Spamann (2010), that is, managerial incentives matter — incentives generated by executive compensation programs are correlated with excessive risk-taking by banks. Also, our results are generally not supportive of the conclusions of Fahlenbrach and Stulz (2011) that the poor performance of banks during the crisis was the result of unforeseen risk. We recommend that bank executive incentive compensation should only consist of restricted stock and restricted stock options — restricted in the sense that the executive cannot sell the shares or exercise the options for two to four years after their last day in office. The above incentive compensation proposal logically leads to a complementary proposal regarding a bank's capital structure, namely, banks should be financed with considerably more equity than they are being financed currently.     

CEO incentive compensation and stock price momentum

We document strong evidence that CEO incentive compensation can predict the significance of stock price momentum through discretionary accrual and real activities manipulation. The profit of momentum strategy increases with CEO pay-for-performance incentive, but decreases with CEO risk-taking incentive. It also evaluates the effects of information uncertainty on such relationship. The evidence is more significant for firms with older and longer tenured CEOs and firms with more informed traders. The relationship between the profit of momentum strategy and CEO pay-for-performance incentive is stronger among CEOs without the risk-taking incentive. Our results are robust for different sub-samples based on before and after Reg FD and Sarbanes–Oxley Act, even after controlling for the potential endogeneity. Further, our findings are consistent with the information diffusion explanation of momentum and the agency theory that incentivised CEOs tend to manipulate information by smoothing good news, concealing mildly bad news and accelerating the disclosure of extremely bad news.     

Stock-based managerial compensation,price informativeness,and the incentive to overinvest

This paper investigates the relationship among a firm's managerial incentive scheme, the informativeness of its stock price, and its investment policy. It shows that the shareholders' concerns about the effectiveness of stock-based compensation can lead to overinvestment. However, unlike other explanations in the literature, our results are neither caused by suboptimal incentive contracts nor do they rely on the assumption that managers are “empire builders.” Rather, overinvestment serves to induce information production by outside investors. By accepting positive and negative NPV projects, a firm effectively increases the market's uncertainty about its cash flow, thereby giving traders more incentives to become informed.     

The incentive problem and the design of investment banking contracts

This paper summarizes the first-best contract between an issuer and an investment banker when there is no incentive problem and determines the optimal deviation from that contract when an incentive problem is present. Since the offer price is observable, the issuer can dictate the price he prefers. The issuer, however, is unable to observe the distribution effort, and thus an incentive problem arises. Under reasonable conditions the issuer will give the banker a commission function that is an increasing function of the net proceeds from the issue and involves a bonus when the issue is sold out at the offer price.     

Payout policy, capital structure, and compensation contracts when managers value control

The optimal contract between managers and investors is endogenouslyderived when managers have preferences for both monetary compensationand corporate resources under their control. When the optimalpayout is privately known to managers, they can be induced tomake payouts by linking their compensation to the payout. Publicequity is a claim on this discretionary payout. If investorscan obtain new information about the firm's optimal payout level,it can be utilized by transferring the control from managementto investors. The new information allows the firm to achievea more efficient allocation through recontracting. We show thatthe new information will be obtained if and only if the payoutfalls below a promised level     

The form of incentive contracts: agency with moral hazard,risk neutrality,and limited liability

The analysis obtains a complete characterization of the optimal agency contract with moral hazard, risk neutrality, and limited liability. We introduce a “critical ratio” that indicates the returns to providing the agent with incentives for effort in each random state. The form of the contract is debt (a capped bonus) when the critical ratio is increasing (decreasing) in the state. An increasing critical ratio in the state‐space setting corresponds to the hazard rate order for the reduced‐form distribution of output, which we term the “decreasing hazard rate in effort property” (DHREP). The critical ratio also yields insights into agency with adverse selection.     

CEO investment of deferred compensation plans and firm performance

We study how US chief executive officers (CEOs) invest their deferred compensation plans depending on the firm's profitability. By looking at the correlation between the CEO's return on these plans and the firm's stock return, we show that deferred compensation is to a large extent invested in the company equity in good times and divested from it in bad times. The divestment from company equity in bad times arguably reflects CEOs' incentive to abandon the firm and to invest in alternative instruments to preserve the value of their deferred compensation plans. This result suggests that the incentive alignment effects of deferred compensation crucially depend on the firm's health status.     

Management compensation contracts and distribution policies in the US technology sector

This paper examines the impact of executive compensation practices on (a) the decision to distribute and (b) the distribution channel employed by companies from the US technology sector. We report that firms that compensate their managers using executive stock options (ESOs) tend to distribute less and firms that use stock awards make more distributions. When we simultaneously examine the distribution and the channel used, we find firms using ESOs restrict their dividend payments but their propensity for stock repurchases is unaffected. Firms using stock awards to compensate managers make greater distributions across all channels. We also provide strong evidence in favour of the agency and leverage explanations for distributions.     

Executive compensation and corporate risk-taking: Evidence from private loan contracts

We examine how management stock options affect corporate risk taking. We exploit exogenous variation in stock option grants generated by FAS 123R and use loan spreads to infer risk taking. Using a difference-in-differences approach, we find that the spreads of loans taken by firms that did not expense options before FAS 123R (treated firms) significantly decrease after FAS 123R relative to firms that either did not issue stock options or voluntarily expensed stock options before 123R (control firms). We also find that the effect is stronger for firms with high agency conflicts associated with risk-shifting. Furthermore, loans taken by the treated firms are less likely to contain collateral requirements and are less likely to have covenants restricting capital investment post FAS 123R.     

Linking Internet strategy to high-quality, cost-effective managed care

This article describes an experimental pilot project incorporating e-commerce and the Internet into the traditional process of health benefit negotiations through the utilization of an HMO Internet auction. The timeline and process of the auction are described, with the final auction taking place during the last week of negotiations. The results reveal an efficient and effective system to augment the traditional benefit negotiation process.     

Hospital managed care diversification and reinsurance strategies

As increasing numbers of patients enroll in managed care plans, health care providers are faced with new operational and financial challenges. This article, the fourth in a series on the financial perils of managed care contracting, addresses issues related to diversification of risk and reinsurance.     

Designing and managing employer-sponsored long-term care plans

Due to prevalent demographic factors, long-term care is an issue of increasing concern to American workers. The cost and time involved in ever-expanding long-term care responsibilities for many employees has resulted in increased indirect employer costs. The authors argue that providing' long-term care as part of the employee benefit plan is an efficient and effective way to manage these increasing costs for both the employer and the employee. The article offers discussion of plan design for long-term care, including issues to be considered and strategy for plan management.