Compensation for managers with career concerns: the role of stock options in optimal contracts

We study the problem of compensating a manager whose career concerns affect his investment strategy. We consider contracts that include cash, shares, and call options, focusing on the role of options in aligning incentives. We find that managers are optimally paid in cash, supplemented by a small amount of call options; shares are excluded. The options are struck at-the-money, consistent with the near-uniform practice of compensation committees. The convexity of option payoffs helps to overcome managerial conservatism, although a nontrivial underinvestment problem persists. Our model yields several testable implications regarding cross-sectional variation in the size of option grants and pay-for-performance sensitivity.     

Correction to: Voluntary disclosure when private information and disclosure costs are jointly determined

Review of Accounting Studies - A Correction to this paper has been published: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11142-021-09623-7     

上市公司财务信息披露:政府功能与角色定位

本文针对上市公司财务信息披露问题,探讨政府在这一过程中的功能与角色定位。政府时上市公司财务信息披露具有监管功能,但这种功能是有限度,而且是有条件的。政府监管应当限于市场失灵并能够修补市场失灵的领域。当前在上市公司财务信息披露监管过程中,政府失灵与监管不足并存,这大大降低了政府的监管效率,使其不能达到预期的监管目标,甚至会加剧市场失灵。     

Mandatory information disclosure and innovation: Evidence from the disclosure of operational information

We use a quasi-natural experiment wherein the Shanghai Stock Exchange requires listed companies in certain industries to disclose operational information and a staggered difference-in-differences model to examine the impact of mandatory information disclosure on corporate innovation. We find that companies subject to mandatory operational information disclosure show significantly increased innovation. This effect is pronounced for companies classified as non-state-owned enterprises, facing severe financing constraints and a high degree of shareholder tunneling behavior and in competitive and high-tech industries. Although mandatory operational information disclosure reduces their competitive advantage, companies appear to compensate by increasing innovation. Our study highlights the positive impact of mandatory operational information disclosure, indicating that it contributes to the high-quality development of both capital markets and companies.     

Voluntary disclosure of information when firms are uncertain of investor response

A firm may prefer not to disclose its private information if it is uncertain of investor response. In the setting under consideration, a firm needs to acquire capital from an investor. The investor can choose to invest in the firm, the risk free asset or in some alternative risky investment opportunity. It is shown that in a partial disclosure equilibrium, the firm discloses average information and withholds bad and good information. Disclosure of average information arises to attract the investor's capital away from the risk free asset.     

Optimal job design in the presence of implicit contracts

We characterize the optimal job design in a multitasking environment when the firms use implicit contracts (i.e., bonus payments). Two natural forms of job design are compared: (i) individual assignment, where each agent is assigned to a particular job and (ii) team assignment, where a group of agents share responsibility for a job and are jointly accountable for its outcome. Team assignment mitigates the multitasking problem but may weaken the implicit contracts. The optimal job design follows a cutoff rule where only the firms with high reputation concerns opt for team assignment. However, the cutoff rule need not hold if the firm can combine implicit incentives with explicit pay‐per‐performance contracts.     

Determinants of voluntary disclosure of segment information: A re-examination of the role of diversification strategy

This paper explores the determinants of management's decision to voluntarily disclose segment information. It is an extension of McKinnon and Dalimunthe (1993) who investigate the role of six hypothesised determinants. Their results indicate that firm size, industry membership, ownership diffusion, and the level of minority interest are related to the voluntary disclosure of segment information. However, they find that leverage and diversification into related versus unrelated industries are not related to this disclosure. It is the diversification finding that motivates our work. This paper explores the effect of differences in data, differences in samples, and differences in the measurement of diversification on the McKinnon and Dalimunthe (1993) results. Using an alternative definition of diversification, we find diversification strategy, firm size, and the level of minority interest to be related to segment disclosure while the results for ownership diffusion and industry are mixed. We find no support for a leverage effect.     

CEO career concerns and the precision of management earnings forecasts

Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting - We extend the research on how CEOs address career concerns during their early tenure in firms and we argue that CEOs use a forecast precision...     

Financial analysts' career concerns and the cost of private debt

Career-concerned analysts are averse to firm risk. Not only does higher firm risk require more effort to analyze the firm, thus constraining analysts' ability to earn more remuneration through covering more firms, but it also jeopardizes their research quality and career advancement. As such, career concerns incentivize analysts to pressure firms to undertake risk-management activities, thus leading to a lower cost of debt. Consistent with our hypothesis, we find a negative association between analyst career concerns and bank loan spreads. In addition, our mediation analysis suggests that this association is achieved through the channel of reducing firm risk. Additional tests suggest that the effect of analyst career concerns on loan spreads is more pronounced for firms with higher analyst coverage. Our study is the first to identify the demand for risk management as a key channel through which analysts help reduce the cost of debt.     

The interaction of incentives and information disclosure: the case of confidence interval information

Reliable risk assessment is critical for success in decision-making, but our assessment of risk is often hindered by inherent biases and limitations in our information processing capacities. Consequently, many have presumed that the disclosure of probabilistic or confidence interval (CI) information would aid our judgment of the uncertainty of an estimate. Empirical support for CI information disclosure, however, is generally lacking. Since human beings are goal-directed, the effectiveness of CI information disclosure may be contingent upon the motivation of an individual. This study, through a computer-based laboratory experiment, examines whether the effectiveness of CI information disclosure in an investment choice task setting is contingent upon the availability of performance-based monetary incentives. The results indicate that the disclosure of CI information can enhance or harm decision performance contingent upon the incentive condition: incentives are vital for realizing benefits from the disclosure of CI information. The implications of the findings are discussed.     

Transparency and fund governance efficacy: The effect of the SEC'S disclosure rule on advisory contracts

In June 2004, the SEC required mutual fund boards to disclose additional information about the inputs and processes involved in advisory contract approvals to help investors make more informed decisions and to encourage independent directors to act more independently when negotiating advisory fees. We find that CEF advisory fees are more likely to decrease after the 2004 SEC amendments, especially for those CEFs with high advisory fees and low investment performances. After the 2004 SEC amendments, CEF advisory rates decrease on average and the magnitudes of their decreases increase. We find that more board meetings and the likelihood of a decrease in advisory fees after the amendments increases with the number of board meetings. Our results are not only supported by textual analysis and type of filing downloads but are also robust to time-series placebo tests, changes in the ratios of independent directors, and funds belonging to “scandal” families. Overall, our results are consistent with the notion that the 2004 SEC amendments successfully encouraged independent fund directors to exert more effort and to act more independently in negotiating advisory fees with fund advisors.     

Isolating the effect of disclosure on information risk

This study examines companies with two classes of shares that entitle their holders to identical cash flow and voting rights but that are available to mutually exclusive sets of investors: A shares to domestic investors and B shares to foreign investors. Price differences between A and B shares are higher in firms with a greater disparity in the disclosures that they make to domestic and foreign investors. This association is more pronounced when the cost (benefit) of information transfer is higher (lower). The results suggest that disclosure disparity creates meaningful differences in investors' average information precision across A and B shares and thus influences the cross-sectional variation in price differences.     

论企业核心能力信息的自愿披露

核心能力信息是区别于其他企业,反映企业持续竞争优势源泉的信息,是企业信息披露战略的重要内容。由于核心能力信息已经超越了传统财务信息的范畴,具有“非规范性”的总体特征,通过自愿性披露揭示企业核心能力信息成为允当选择。本文在分析核心能力信息自愿披露动因的基础上,从资产角度探讨了核心能力的确认方法,并对核心能力自愿披露的实现方式进行了研究,认为核心能力信息的自愿披露应该遵循循序渐进的原则,以非财务报告披露为起点,逐步过渡到管理层讨论与分析(MD&A)披露,最终实现核心能力报告的披露目标。     

Optimal insurance contracts when establishing the amount of losses is costly

The problem of establishing the amount of losses covered by public and private insurance is often characterized by asymmetric information, in which the claimant already knows the extent of a loss but this can be demonstrated to the insurer only at a cost. It is shown that a simple arrangement, which provides greater coverage whenever individuals demonstrate high losses, gives claimants an excessive incentive to establish the amount of their losses. This paper determines what insurance claims process, consistent with the form typically employed in existing insurance arrangements, is optimal.     

How disclosure quality affects the level of information asymmetry

We examine two potential mechanisms through which disclosure quality is expected to reduce information asymmetry: (1) altering the trading incentives of informed and uninformed investors so that there is relatively less trading by privately informed investors, and (2) reducing the likelihood that investors discover and trade on private information. Our results indicate that the negative relation between disclosure quality and information asymmetry is primarily caused by the latter mechanism. While information asymmetry is negatively associated with the quality of the annual report and investor relations activities, it is positively associated with quarterly report disclosure quality. Additionally, we hypothesize and find that that the negative association between disclosure quality and information asymmetry is stronger in settings characterized by higher levels of firm-investor asymmetry.     

我国创业板企业信息披露行为的借鉴与选择

一、香港创业板信息披露经验的借鉴 香港创业板市场的构想始于20世纪80年代末,历经十余年后,1999年7月22日,香港联交所公布了《香港联合交易所创业板证券上市规则》,1999年11月15日香港创业板正式宣告成立.     

Voluntary disclosure of reasons for auditor changes and the capital market reaction to information disclosure

This study examines the association between firm attributes and management’s voluntary disclosure of the reason(s) for auditor changes and evaluates the capital market reaction to information disclosure of the auditor change events accompanied by preexisting red flag and non-red flag issues. We find that managers are more likely to disclose the reason(s) for auditor changes when those changes occurred because of benign business reasons or if the reasons do not indicate the presence of any underlying operating or financial reporting problem. On the other hand, managers are less likely to disclose the reason(s) for auditor changes when those changes are preceded by red-flag situations. Furthermore, auditor changes accompanied by preexisting red-flag situations are viewed negatively by the capital market, implying that the full disclosure of reasons for auditor changes is informative to investors. This observation is supported further by our market-based analyses, which consistently show that auditor changes accompanied by prevailing red flag issues are valued incrementally in the market above and beyond the reportable events (under FRR No. 31) and auditor-initiated changes. The study contributes to the recent policy debate related to mandating the disclosure of the reason(s) for auditor switches. Specifically, the results support the recent debates that the current voluntary disclosure regime results in selective disclosure practices that are likely to contribute to the general lack of transparency with respect to auditor changes.     

无形资产信息披露的问题和对策

在知识经济时代,无形资产地位急剧上升,无形资产计量对上市公司财务状况的描述起着决定性的作用.无形资产信息披露对于所有者、经营者以及其他有利害相关者无疑都是很重要的,因此,无形资产信息的披露应该做到充分、公开、真实与科学.     

会计信息可信度、信息披露管理与资源有效配置

会计信息披露理论认为,自愿性信息披露通过降低投资者和内部人间的信息不对称,优化资源分配和降低资本成本,然而这种效应又依赖于自愿性信息披露可观察到的可信度。由于管理者的自我服务意图,自愿性信息披露的可信度事前很难保障,投资者可能从管理者传递的其他信号推断该自愿性信息披露的可信度。也就是说,会计信息被信息提供者披露并被信息使用者接收,进而在资本市场产生反应,不仅要求会计信息本身具备某种质量特征,还取决于信息使用者对会计信息可信度的主观评价。因此只有以信息使用者可信的方式披露具备质量特征的会计信息,才有助于资本市场资源的有效配置。     

Portfolio size and information disclosure: An analysis of startup accelerators

We study the information-gathering role of a startup accelerator and consider the accelerator's incentives to choose a portfolio size and disclose information about participating ventures. We show that in a rational-expectations equilibrium, the resultant portfolio size is smaller than the first-best (efficient) level, consistent with some real-world observations. We further show that when some signals are uninformative and the portfolio consists of mostly high-quality ventures, the accelerator may choose to disclose only positive signals (and conceal negative signals) about its portfolio firms — a strategy we refer to as partial disclosure. Moreover, coupled with pursuing this strategy of partial disclosure, we demonstrate that the accelerator may possess incentives to exit its portfolio firms early.