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Executive and Broad-Based Stock Options: Evidence from U.S. Panel Data
Abstract
This paper examines the productivity effect of the adoption of executive and broad-based stock options. The findings include a positive impact on productivity after the introduction of both executive and broad-based stock options. This productivity effect is maintained over a five-year period after adoption for executive plans but the effect diminishes for broad-based plans. We interpret these findings as evidence of stock option usage as being a benefit to organizations; however, firms may need to distribute broad-based stock options in the same way as for executive plans to maintain the impact.
... There is a substantial body of literature showing that greater use of options at the executive level is not associated with an increase in performance (Hall and Murphy, 2003). However, recent work has shown that stock options are associated with higher profit and output (Core and Guay, 2001;Hanlon, Rajgopal and Shevin, 2003;Ittner, Lambert and Larcker, 2002;Kroumova, Sesil, Kruse and Blasi, 2002;Sesil, Kroumova, Blasi and Kruse, 2002;Sesil and Lin, 2005). ...
... The use of broad-based stock options may impact profitability through cost savings associated with the retention of human capital or increased output per worker. There is evidence that broadly-distributed stock options promote the retention of human capital (Oyer and Scheafer, 2002) and are also associated with superior labor productivity (Kroumova, et al., 2002;Sesil et al., 2002;Sesil and Lin, 2005). Other things being held constant, an increase in productivity would mean an increase in profitability. ...
... There is a substantial body of empirical literature that finds no relationship between the size of a stock option grant and a firm's performance (Murphy 1999;Hall and Murphy 2003;Core et al., 2003). However, a recent body of empirical work has found positive impacts on performance associated with stock options (Core and Guay 2001;Gerhardt and Milkovich 1990;Hillegeist and Penalva 2003;Ittner, Lambert, and Larcker 2002;Kedia and Mozumdar 2002;Kroumova, Sesil, Kruse, Blasi 2002;Sesil and Lin, 2005;Sesil, Kroumova, Kruse, Blasi 2000;Sesil, Kroumova, Blasi, Kruse 2002). ...
... The main argument in favor of the last payment system mentioned, based on the Agency Theory, is that it aims to align the interests of managers and shareholders (Rubinstein, 1995;Zhang, 2002;Oyer and Schaefer, 2003;Kato et al., 2005;Sesil and Lin, 2005;Damodaran, 2005;Hodder and Jackwerth, 2005) by linking future remuneration to the value of shares. ...
The absence or failure of some mechanisms of corporate governance facilitates to board members on the possibility of establishing a reward system more suitable to their own personal interests rather than to those of investors. Nowadays, this problem has intensified the lack of investors confidence in the members of the board of directors, whose payment levels have been criticized, especially over the last few years. In this context, this study aims to verify empirically the relationship between the characteristics of boards of directors and the level and structure of compensation of directors in Spain, in order to analyze its significance in the control of salaries. With a view to testing this hypothesis, we selected a sample of 76 listed Spanish corporations for the period 2004-2009. The results of this work reveal that control mechanisms like the separation of the figures of the chairman and the chief executive officer (CEO), the shareholding of board members, and the percentage of independent directors were found to be significant in reducing the levels of remuneration to the members of the board, specifically, cash payments received by them. Therefore, the characteristics of the board may influence their own remuneration, particularly in an ownership concentration context.
We examine the separation of ownership and control for 2,980 corporations in nine East Asian countries. In all countries, voting rights frequently exceed cash-flow rights via pyramid structures and cross-holdings. The separation of ownership and control is most pronounced among family-controlled firms and small firms. More than two-thirds of firms are controlled by a single shareholder. Managers of closely held firms tend to be relatives of the controlling shareholder's family. Older firms are generally family-controlled, dispelling the notion that ownership becomes dispersed over time. Finally, significant corporate wealth in East Asia is concentrated among a few families.
The present study has two general purposes. First, based on the compensation strategy literature, we examine the extent to which organizations facing similar conditions make different managerial compensation decisions regarding base pay, bonus pay, and eligibility for long-term incentives. Second, working from expectancy and agency theory perspectives, we explore the consequences of these decisions for subsequent firm performance as measured by return on assets. Using longitudinal data on approximately 16,000 top and middle level managers and 200 organizations, significant between-organization differences in compensation decisions are found. The smallest organization effects are on the level of base pay. The largest organization effects are on bonus levels and eligibility for long-term incentives. In other words, our results suggest that organizations tend to distinguish themselves through decisions about pay contingency or variability rather than through decisions about the level of base pay. To study consequences, residualized measures (adjusted for employee and job factors) of organization pay level and pay mix are used. Pay level is not associated with organization financial performance. On the other hand, greater contingency of pay in the form of bonuses and long-term incentives is associated with better financial performance.
The authors report the first results for Japanese firms on the effects of employee stock-ownership plans (ESOPs) and bonuses by estimating production functions using new panel data. They find that the introduction of an ESOP will lead to a 4-5 percent increase in productivity; this productivity payoff takes three to four years. There is a modest productivity gain from the bonus system. The authors also find evidence that the productivity effect of bonuses is enhanced by the existence of ESOPs, suggesting that ESOPs may create a climate conducive to profit-sharing by enhancing long-term commitment and peer monitoring. Copyright 1995 by American Economic Association.
The mark of a capitalistic society is that resources are owned and allocated by such nongovernmental organizations as firms, households, and markets. Resource owners increase productivity through cooperative specialization and this leads to the demand for economic organizations which facilitate cooperation. When a lumber mill employs a cabinetmaker, cooperation between specialists is achieved within a firm, and when a cabinetmaker purchases wood from a lumberman, the cooperation takes place across markets (or between firms). Two important problems face a theory of economic organization – to explain the conditions that determine whether the gains from specialization and cooperative production can better be obtained within an organization like the firm, or across markets, and to explain the structure of the organization. It is common to see the firm characterized by the power to settle issues by fiat, by authority, or by disciplinary action superior to that available in the conventional market. This is delusion. The firm does not own all its inputs. It has no power of fiat, no authority, no disciplinary action any different in the slightest degree from ordinary market contracting between any two people. I can “punish” you only by withholding future business or by seeking redress in the courts for any failure to honor our exchange agreement. That is exactly all that any employer can do. He can fire or sue, just as I can fire my grocer by stopping purchases from him or sue him for delivering faulty products.
This paper analyzes the survival of organizations in which decision agents do not bear a major share of the wealth effects of their decisions. This is what the literature on large corporations calls separation of 'ownership' and 'control.' Such separation of decision and risk bearing functions is also common to organizations like large professional partnerships, financial mutuals and nonprofits. We contend that separation of decision and risk bearing functions survives in these organizations in part because of the benefits of specialization of management and risk bearing but also because of an effective common approach to controlling the implied agency problems. In particular, the contract structures of all these organizations separate the ratification and monitoring of decisions from the initiation and implementation of the decisions.
In this paper we draw on recent progress in the theory of (1) property rights, (2) agency, and (3) finance to develop a theory of ownership structure for the firm.1 In addition to tying together elements of the theory of each of these three areas, our analysis casts new light on and has implications for a variety of issues in the professional and popular literature, such as the definition of the firm, the “separation of ownership and control,” the “social responsibility” of business, the definition of a “corporate objective function,” the determination of an optimal capital structure, the specification of the content of credit agreements, the theory of organizations, and the supply side of the completeness-of-markets problem.
This paper summarizes the empirical and theoretical research on executive compensation and provides a comprehensive and up-to-date description of pay practices (and trends in pay practices) for chief executive officers (CEOs). Topics discussed include the level and structure of CEO pay (including detailed analyses of annual bonus plans, executive stock options, and option valuation), international pay differences, the pay-setting process, the relation between CEO pay and firm performance ("pay-performance sensitivities"), the relation between sensitivities and subsequent firm performance, relative performance evaluation, executive turnover, and the politics of CEO pay.
We examine determinants of non-executive employee stock option holdings, grants, and exercises for 756 firms during 1994-1997. We find that firms use greater stock option compensation when facing capital requirements and financing constraints. Our results are also consistent with firms using options to attract and retain certain types of employees as well as to create incentives to increase firm value. After controlling for economic determinants and stock returns, option exercises are greater (less) when the firm's stock price hits 52-week highs (lows), which confirms in a broad sample the psychological bias documented by Heath et al. (Quarterly Journal of Economics 114 (1999) 601-628).
We examine a sample of firms that adopt "target ownership plans", under which managers are required to own a minimum amount of stock. We find that prior to plan adoption, such firms exhibit low managerial equity ownership and low stock price performance. Managerial equity ownership increases significantly in the two years following plan adoption. We also observe that excess accounting returns and stock returns are higher after the plan is adopted. Thus, for our sample of firms, the required increases in the level of managerial equity ownership result in improvements in firm performance.
A tremendous amount of research has explored the relationship, between managerial pay and firm performance. We argue that this research has generally been limited because it ignores other criteria that can be used to determine managerial pay, as well as the influence of a firm's governance structure and various contingencies. Our analysis leads to a general framework for research on executive pay. This framework is used to evaluate the present state of research in this field and the contribution of the six papers in this special research forum, and to identify directions for further research.
Agency theory is an important, yet controversial, theory. This paper reviews agency theory, its contributions to organization theory, and the extant empirical work and develops testable propositions. The conclusions are that agency theory (a) offers unique insight into in- formation systems, outcome uncertainty, incentives, and risk and (b) is an empirically valid perspective, particularly when coupled with complementary perspectives. The principal recommendation is to in- corporate an agency perspective in studies of the many problems having a cooperative structure. One day Deng Xiaoping decided to take his grandson to visit Mao. "Call me granduncle," Mao offered warmly. "Oh, I certainly couldn't do that, Chairman Mao," the awe-struck child replied. "Why don't you give him an apple?" suggested Deng. No sooner had Mao done so than the boy happily chirped, "Oh thank you, Granduncle." "You see," said Deng, "what in- centives can achieve." ("Capitalism," 1984, p. 62)
In a sample of 200 large Nasdaq firms we examine the determinants of stock option grants and study whether options are associated with superior firm performance. We find that firms grant options in the face of financial constraints, to give incentives to increase firm value, and to hire and retain employees. We further find that grant of options to retain key employees and to relax financial constraints increases firm value and results in positive abnormal returns. However, there is little evidence that option grants to align employee incentives in high growth firms results in superior performance. There also exists some evidence that difficulty in the estimation of the true cost of stock options results in over estimation of firm value and abnormal returns, though this effect is confined only to the case when Fama-French size and book-to-market portfolios are used as reference portfolios.
In this paper, we use empirical analysis to analyze company characteristics associated with the adoption and maintenance of broad-based stock option plans. First, a cross-sectional analysis evaluates what company characteristics are now associated with these plans. Second, a longitudinal analysis examines the company characteristics that predict the adoption of such plans. Overall, our results provide support to the claim that higher monitoring costs prompt firms to adopt and maintain employee stock option plans. Firms with higher levels of business risk are less likely to shift some of that risk to employees through stock-based compensation, whereas firm with higher variability in total shareholder returns are more likely to adopt broad-based employee stock options. Nonunion firms are more likely to adopt and maintain such plans, and financial constraints do not appear to be driving the adoption decision.
Kruse details the reasons profit sharing plans are implemented and the systemic factors within firms, particularly in relation to unions, that influence whether or not they are successful. He presents evidence based on a unique database developed from 500 public U.S. firms - matched to firm performance over the period of 1979-1991 - on the two central theories related to profit sharing: 1) The Productivity Theory, and 2) the Stability Theory.
The paper examines the determinants and performance consequences of equity grants to senior-level executives, lower-level managers, and non-exempt employees of “new economy” firms. We find that the determinants of equity grants are significantly different in new versus old economy firms. We also find that employee retention objectives, which new economy firms rank as the most important goal of their equity grant programs, have a significant impact on new hire grants, but not subsequent grants. Our exploratory performance tests indicate that lower than expected grants and/or existing holdings of options are associated with poorer performance in subsequent years.
We examine a sample of firms that adopt “target ownership plans”, under which managers are required to own a minimum amount of stock. We find that prior to plan adoption, such firms exhibit low managerial equity ownership and low stock price performance. Managerial equity ownership increases significantly in the two years following plan adoption. We also observe that excess accounting returns and stock returns are higher after the plan is adopted. Thus, for our sample of firms, the required increases in the level of managerial equity ownership result in improvements in firm performance.
This paper integrates elements from the theory of agency, the theory of property rights and the theory of finance to develop a theory of the ownership structure of the firm. We define the concept of agency costs, show its relationship to the ‘separation and control’ issue, investigate the nature of the agency costs generated by the existence of debt and outside equity, demonstrate who bears these costs and why, and investigate the Pareto optimality of their existence. We also provide a new definition of the firm, and show how our analysis of the factors influencing the creation and issuance of debt and equity claims is a special case of the supply side of the completeness of markets problem.The directors of such [joint-stock] companies, however, being the managers rather of other people's money than of their own, it cannot well be expected, that they should watch over it with the same anxious vigilance with which the partners in a private copartnery frequently watch over their own. Like the stewards of a rich man, they are apt to consider attention to small matters as not for their master's honour, and very easily give themselves a dispensation from having it. Negligence and profusion, therefore, must always prevail, more or less, in the management of the affairs of such a company.Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776, Cannan Edition(Modern Library, New York, 1937) p. 700.
A common view is that there is little correlation between firm performance and CEO pay. Using a new fifteen-year panel data set of CEOs in the largest, publicly traded U.S. companies, we document a strong relationship between firm performance and CEO compensation. This relationship is generated almost entirely by changes in the value of CEO holdings of stock and stock options. In addition, we show that both the level of CEO compensation and the sensitivity of compensation to firm performance have risen dramatically since 1980, largely because of increases in stock option grants. © 2000 the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Stock and option compensation and the level of managerial equity incentives are aspects of corporate governance that are especially controversial to shareholders, institutional activists, and government regulators. Similar to much of the corporate finance and corporate governance literature, research on stock-based compensation and incentives has not only generated useful insights, but also produced many contradictory findings. Not surprisingly, many fundamental questions remain unanswered. In this study, the authors synthesize the broad literature on equity-based compensation and executive incentives and highlight topics that seem especially appropriate for future research.
The benefits of stock options are often not large enough to offset the inefficiency implied by the large divergence between the cost of options to companies and the value of options to risk-averse, undiversified executives and employees. Moreover, the benefits of options can often be achieved more effectively and economically through other means. Why are options so prevalent? Several explanations include changes in corporate governance, reporting requirements, taxes, the bull market and managerial rent-seeking. We offer an alternative hypothesis: boards and managers incorrectly perceive stock options to be inexpensive because options create no accounting charge and require no cash outlay.
We document differences in CEO pay and incentives in the United States and the United Kingdom for 1997. After controlling for size, sector and other firm and executive characteristics, CEOs in the US earn 45% higher cash compensation and 190% higher total compensation. The calculated effective ownership percentage in the US implies that the median CEO receives 1.48% of any increase in shareholder wealth compared to 0.25% in the UK The differences, can be largely attributed to greater share option awards in the US arising from, institutional and cultural differences between the two countries.
Profit sharing has often been suggested as a potential solution to principal/agent problems in the workplace. The relationship between productivity and profit sharing is examined using a panel dataset drawn from 2,976 publicly-held companies over the 1971-85 period. Alternatively using firm-intercept and first-difference specifications, the regression results indicate that the adoption of profit sharing is associated with a 2.5-4.2 percent increase in productivity. In addition, the size of the effect increases with the proportion of employees participating in profit sharing. These results hold under a variety of specifications and do not appear to be explained by accompanying changes in management or personnel policies. Copyright 1992 by Royal Economic Society.
This paper analyzes the performance consequences of employee stock options for a broad sample of firms during the period 1996-1999. Our tests are performed separately for the top 5 executives and all other employees. We estimate the expected level of option incentives based on each firm's economic characteristics. We examine the association between the unexpected level of option incentives and firm performance as measured by future abnormal returns, future return on assets, and current and future firm value (Tobin's Q). We find consistent evidence that firms with unexpectedly high levels of option incentives exhibit significantly higher levels of firm performance. The results hold for both Executives and Employees and are consistent across each of our three measures of firm performance.
This paper analyzes the survival of organizations in which decision agents do not bear a major share of the wealth effects of their decisions. This is what the literature on large corporations calls separation of "ownership" and "control." Such separation of decision and risk bearing functions is also common to organizations like large professional partnerships, financial mutuals and nonprofits. We contend that separation of decision and risk bearing functions survives in these organizations in part because of the benefits of specialization of management and risk bearing but also because of an effective common approach to controlling the implied agency problems. In particular, the contract structures of all these organizations separate the ratification and monitoring of decisions from the initiation and implementation of the decisions. Journal of Law and Economics, Vol. XXVI, June 1983. Separation of Ownership and Control * Eugene F. Fama and Michael C. Jensen Journal of...
The Future of Broad-based options
- National Center For Employee
- Ownership
National Center for Employee Ownership. 2004. The Future of Broad-based options. Oakland,
CA.: NCEO Press Release.
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(-0.36)
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(-0.99)
(-1.42)
(-1.77)
A Growing Number of U.S. Employees Receive Stock Options
- National Center For Employee
- Ownership
National Center for Employee Ownership. 2002. A Growing Number of U.S. Employees Receive
Stock Options. Oakland, CA.: NCEO Press Release.