Executive compensation and corporate risk management

We provide the first evidence on the effects of executive compensation on corporate risk management for insurers. Our unique data set allows the construction of a new, more complete measure of corporate risk management behavior. Specifically, we include hedging-driven usage of not only derivatives but also insurance. To address potential endogeneity, we utilize a difference-in-differences approach, based on the implementation of FAS 123R that required firms to expense stock-based compensation at fair value. We find that the decline in the convexity of executive compensation following FAS 123R led firms to significantly increase corporate risk management, primarily through increased demand for insurance.     

Incentive Efficiency of Stock versus Options

This paper examines the relative incentive costs of using stockversus options in management incentive contracts that use market priceas the performance measure. We establish that if the manager'seffort has little or no effect on a firm's operating risk, thenthe cost of incentive risk is less using stock rather than options.However, this result is reversed if the manager's effort has asignificant impact on the firm's operating risk.     

CEO Stock Options and Equity Risk Incentives

Abstract:   We test the hypothesis that the risk incentive effects of CEO stock option grants motivate managers to take on more risk than they would otherwise. Using a sample of mergers we document that the ratio of post‐ to pre‐merger stock return variance is positively related to the risk incentive effect of CEO stock option compensation but this relationship is conditioned on firm size, with firm size having a moderating effect on the risk incentive effect of stock options. Using a broader time‐series cross‐sectional sample of firms we find a strong positive relationship between CEO risk incentive embedded in the stock options and subsequent equity return volatility. As in the case of the merger sample, this relationship is stronger for smaller firms.     

Incentives of Stock Option Based Compensation

We introduce explicitly the effort as a choice variable in a continuous time utility maximisation framework of an executive who is partly compensated with stock options. We solve the model in the case where the executive is not allowed to trade in the company’s stock but is able to achieve a partial insurance through trading in a correlated market portfolio. We define the executive’s value of the options through a certainty equivalence approach both in the case of European call options and non-standard capped stock options and study the behaviour of the reservation price as relevant parameters change.JEL Classification: G13, G30, G32, J33, M12     

CEO compensation, option incentives, and information disclosure

This paper examines the impact of information disclosure on the valuation of CEO options and the incentives created by those options. Prior executive compensation research in the US has made assumptions about key input variables that can affect the calculation of option values and financial incentives. Accordingly, biases may have ensued due to incomplete information disclosure about noncurrent option grants. Using new data on a sample of UK CEOs, we value executive option holdings and incentives for the first time and estimate the levels of distortion created by the less than complete US-style disclosure requirements. We also investigate the levels of distortion in the UK for the minority of companies that choose to reveal only partial information. Our results suggest that there have to date been few economic biases arising from less than complete information disclosure. Furthermore, we demonstrate that researchers using US data, who made reasonable assumptions about the inputs of noncurrent option grants, are unlikely to have made significant errors when calculating CEO financial incentives or option wealth. However, the recent downturn in the US stock market could result in the same assumptions, producing exaggerated incentive estimates in the future.     

Good for managers,bad for society? Causal evidence on the association between risk-taking incentives and corporate social responsibility

Using FAS 123R as an exogenous shock to stock options, I provide evidence that equity-based risk-taking incentives discourage corporate social responsibility (CSR). This finding suggests that compensation incentives can motivate managers not to pursue CSR strategies because CSR reduces firms’ risk and provides insurance-like benefits. Firms with a greater demand for CSR's risk reduction are more sensitive to changes in risk-taking incentives. I triangulate my results by confirming that CSR weaknesses are positively related to subsequent stock return volatility. Overall, using a robust empirical design, I find that risk-taking incentives are a determinant of firms’ CSR.     

Disappointment aversion and the equity premium puzzle: new international evidence

Drawing upon the seminal study of Ang, Bekaert, and Liu [2005. “Why Stock May Disappoint?” Journal of Financial Economics 76 (3): 471–508], we incorporate disappointment aversion (DA, that is, aversion to outcomes that are worse than prior expectations) within a simple theoretical portfolio-choice model. Based on the results of this model, we then empirically address the portfolio allocation problem of an investor who chooses between a risky and a risk-free asset using international data from 19 countries. Our findings strongly support the view that DA leads investors to reduce their exposure to the stock market (i.e. DA significantly depresses the portfolio weights on equities in all cases considered). Overall, our study shows that in addition to risk aversion, DA plays an important role in explaining the equity premium puzzle around the world.     

An IFRS 2 and FASB 123 (R) Compatible Model for the Valuation of Employee Stock Options

In this paper, we show how employee stock options can be valued under the new reporting standards IFRS 2 and FASB 123 (revised) for share-based payments. Both standards require companies to expense employee stock options at fair value. We propose a new valuation model, referred to as Enhanced American model, that complies with the new standards and produces fair values often lower than those generated by traditional models such as the Black–Scholes model or the adjusted Black–Scholes model. We also provide a sensitivity analysis of model input parameters and analyze the impact of the parameters on the fair value of the option. The valuation of employee stock options requires an accurate estimation of the exercise behavior. We show how the exercise behavior can be modeled in a binomial tree and demonstrate the relevance of the input parameters in the calibration of the model to an estimated expected life of the option. JEL Classification G13, G30     

Downsizing decisions: The joint influence of equity incentives and behavioral biases

Although new investment can be viewed as a decision to pursue projects from a wide number of growth opportunities with easily discernible (and presumably preferable) risk profiles, downsizing (e.g., through layoffs, plant closings, asset divestitures, etc.) is a dichotomous choice to either abandon or continue an existing project where the relative risk between these options is not clear. Our evidence suggests that vega in the pre-downsizing period is associated with risky investment that necessitates future downsizing. We further find that contemporaneous vega is associated with a greater likelihood of downsizing. On the other hand, our evidence suggests that delta is a significant impediment to downsizing. We examine the influence of behavioral factors in the decision-making process and find downsizing decisions are discouraged by managerial overconfidence but encouraged by managers’ aversion to ambiguity. Finally, we investigate whether equity incentives and behavioral factors lead to better downsizing decisions. We find that downsizing firms with high ambiguity perform better after downsizing relative to their matched pair with lower ambiguity.     

Optimal Incentive Contracts for Loss‐Averse Managers: Stock Options versus Restricted Stock Grants

This paper provides an explanation for the widespread use of stock option grants in executive compensation. It shows that the optimal incentive contract for loss‐averse managers must contain a substantial portion of stock options even when it should consist exclusively of stock grants for “classical” risk‐averse managers. The paper also provides an explanation for the drastic increase in the risk‐adjusted level of CEO compensations over the past two decades and argues that more option‐based compensation should be used in firms with higher cash flow volatility and in industries with a higher degree of heterogeneity among firms.     

高管控制下的财务重述与高管薪酬关系研究

本文在西方学者的管理层权力论基础上,结合中国垄断企业的特点,进一步提出了高管控制论,以2000～2008年曾发生过财务重述的我国代表性垄断行业上市公司共148个重述样本作为研究对象,深入分析高管控制与高管薪酬的相关性,考察了高管以财务重述为路径,影响企业财务业绩进而提高薪酬的可能性。研究发现:高管控制与高管薪酬显著正相关;虽然我国绝大部分国有垄断企业的高管不拥有或较少拥有股票和期权,财务重述仍然会影响公司高管的薪酬。     

The Subjective Valuation of Indexed Stock Options and Their Incentive Effects

We analyze the potential role of indexed stock options in future pay‐for‐performance executive compensation contracts. We present a unified framework for index‐linked stock options, discuss their incentive effects, argue that indexation schemes based on the capital‐asset pricing model (CAPM) are the most suitable for executive compensation, and derive a subjective pricing model for the class of CAPM‐based indexed stock options. Contrary to earlier work, executives would not be motivated to take on investment projects with high idiosyncratic risk once their lack of wealth diversification and degree of risk aversion are factored into the analysis.     

Director Compensation and the Reliability of Accounting Information

This paper studies the effect of incentive-based compensation on directors' monitoring of management. Using total accruals to measure the level of earnings management, I find that director stock option compensation is associated with higher levels of total accruals. I interpret this result to suggest that director stock options are more likely to align interests of directors with those of managers and that this convergence of interest manifests in lower transparency and reliability of financial information. The results suggest that director stock option compensation provides incentive for directors to compromise their task in the financial reporting process.     

Distress Risk,Growth and Earnings Quality

We extend and complement prior work by investigating the earnings quality of firms with different financial health characteristics and growth prospects. By using three alternative measures of default likelihood and two alternative measures of growth options, without being limited to a specific event, we provide a more comprehensive setup for analysing the earnings characteristics of the universe of firms than examining distressed firms with persistent losses, dividend reductions or bankruptcy‐filings. Our dataset consists of 15,049 healthy U.S. firms over the period 1990–2004. Results show that the relation between earnings quality and financial health is not monotonic. Distressed firms have a low level of earnings timeliness for bad news and a high level for good news, and manage earnings toward a positive target more frequently than healthy firms. On the other hand, healthy firms have a high level of earnings timeliness for bad news. Growth aspects play an important role in a firm's ability to manage earnings. In contrast to the findings of prior studies, growth firms have greater earnings timeliness for bad news, whereas value firms manage earnings toward a positive target more frequently than growth firms.     

Trade Credit Risk Management: The Role of Executive Risk‐Taking Incentives

In this study we investigate how executive equity incentives affect companies’ risk‐taking behavior in relationships with their customers. We hypothesize and find that executive risk‐taking incentives provided by options are positively related to the degree of trade credit riskiness measured both as the amount of total trade credit a firm extends to all its customers and as the amount of trade credit a firm extends to customers with a high probability of default. We also find that the measures of trade credit riskiness are positively related to the firm's future stock return volatility, suggesting that the customer default risk inherent in customer‐supplier trade credit relationships represents an important economic source of the overall supplier‐firm riskiness. The findings of the study provide insights into why firms facing financial difficulties are not denied trade credit.     

Risk Preferences Heterogeneity: Evidence from Asset Markets

Using asset market data, as well as theoretical relations between investors' preferences,option-implied, risk-neutral, probability distribution functions (PDFs,) and index-implied,actual, PDFs, this paper extracts a time-series of investors' relative risk aversion (RRA)functions. Based on results recently derived by Benninga and Mayshar (2000), thesefunctions are used to recover the evolution of risk preferences heterogeneity. Applyingnon-parametric estimation on European call options written on the S & P500 index, wefind that: (i) the RRA functions are decreasing; and (ii) the constructed risk preferencesheterogeneity series is positively correlated in a static, as well as a dynamic, setup witha prevalent proxy for investors heterogeneity, namely, the spread between auction- andmarket-yields of Treasury bills.     

Diffidence Theorem, State-Dependent Preferences, and DARA

C. Gollier (The Economics of Risk and Time. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2001) has developed a standard technique based on the diffidence theorem. This theorem provides a very simple instrument to solve relatively sophisticated problems when preferences are state-independent. The object of this article is to show that the theorem is also very useful to derive significant results with state-dependent preferences. Using the reference set notion and an extension of the diffidence theorem, we establish formally necessary and sufficient conditions on the reference set, in order to obtain prudence and decreasing absolute risk aversion. Examples of DARA utility functions compatible with non-linear reference sets are presented in the Appendix.     

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.     

Stock Option Schedules and Managerial Opportunism

This study investigates some of the most important avenues that mangers use to manipulate the value of stock option grants. It also compares the use of these avenues in firms that issue scheduled options and in firms that issue irregular options. We document that before the Sarbanes‐Oxley Act (SOX), cumulative abnormal returns were significantly negative in the 30‐day window before an option grant, but cumulative abnormal returns turned significantly positive after the option grant. This pattern is more pronounced for irregular options, and the evidence supports the hypothesis that opportunistic manipulation of strike prices by CEOs maximized the value of the option grants. We find the disclosure requirement of option grants included in SOX successfully curtails opportunistic behavior in firms that issue scheduled options, but has a lesser effect stopping opportunistic behavior in firms that issue irregular options. Firms granting irregular options take larger negative discretionary accruals in advance of the grant than firms that grant scheduled options, and the degree of downward earnings management increases with the size of the subsequent grant. We further show that firms are more likely to issue irregular options when they offer larger option grants, have a less independent board, receive less analyst coverage, have a new CEO, exhibit poor prior performance, have higher stock return volatility and are smaller in size.     

The Relationship Between Equity-Based Compensation and Managerial Risk Taking: Evidence from China

The authors analyze the impact of equity-based compensation on managerial risk-taking behavior in Chinese listed firms from January 2006 to July 2011. They find that greater risk-taking incentives lead executives to invest more in research and development (R&D) projects and less in capital expenditures. Greater managerial risk-taking incentive increases firm focus. Managerial risk-taking incentives have positive effects on firms' leverage. Overall, increasing the sensitivity of chief executive officers' portfolio value to stock return volatility helps incentivize executives to work harder, as sharing gains and losses with shareholders aligns the interests of executives and shareholders. In addition, the results indicate that state control of firms has a negative effect on R&D investment, and this suggests that state-controlled firms should take more initiative to innovate.