Search results

China has formally implemented equity incentive for more than 10 years; thus, a considerable number of equity incentive programs has entered the exercise period. This means that it is time to conduct a comprehensive analysis of the incentive effects of equity incentive throughout the whole implementation phase. The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between equity incentive, enterprise’s risk taking and risk decisions in China.

Using sensitivity of executives’ wealth and stock price (Delta) to measure the alignment effect and using sensitivity of executives’ wealth and stock return volatility (Vega) to measure the risk-taking effect, this paper aims to empirically test the relation of equity incentive and enterprise’s risk taking and risk decisions.

The authors find that Vega is positively related to risk taking; however, this improvement was mainly reflected in the private enterprises rather than state-owned enterprises. In terms of corporate policy choice, the authors find that Vega is positively related to firm focus and leverage. But, they have not found that Vega can promote R&D investment.

Existing studies have mostly concerned about the executives’ opportunistic behavior; however, analyses of the positive effect of equity incentive are limited. The authors use a combination of risk-taking incentives and alignment incentives to test the relationship between equity incentive and risk taking.

This study aims to investigate the role of the market for corporate control as an external governance mechanism and its effect on executive risk-taking incentives. Managers tend to be risk-averse as they are more exposed to idiosyncratic risk, resulting in sub-optimal risk-taking that does not maximize shareholders’ wealth. The takeover market alleviates this problem, inducing managers to take more risk. Therefore, risk-taking incentives inside the firm are less powerful when the outside takeover market is more active.

Exploiting a novel measure of takeover vulnerability recently constructed by Cain et al. (2017), the authors explore how takeover vulnerability influences executive risk-taking incentives. Using a large sample of US firms, the authors use fixed-effects regressions, propensity score matching and instrumental variable analysis.

Consistent with this study’s hypothesis, a more active takeover market results in less powerful risk-taking incentives. Specifically, a rise in takeover vulnerability by one standard deviation diminishes executive risk-taking incentives by 22.39%, which is an economically meaningful magnitude.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to explore the effect of the takeover market on managerial risk-taking incentives, using a novel measure of takeover susceptibility. The authors’ measure of takeover vulnerability is considerably less susceptible to endogeneity, enabling the authors to draw causal inferences with more confidence.

With the accelerated technological advancement, innovation has become a critical factor, which affects the core competitiveness of a company. However, studies about the relationship between internal stock option mechanisms and innovation productivity remain limited. Therefore, this paper aims to examine the impact of stock options and their elements design on innovation output from an internal mechanism perspective.

Using a sample of 302 stock option incentive plans announced and implemented between 2006 and 2016, this study uses the propensity score matching and difference-in-difference model to find out whether the implementation of stock options improves the innovation outputs of enterprises.

Based on the statistical analysis, it is concluded that: stock options can stimulate corporate innovation; a stock option may drive innovation outputs through two ways, performance-based incentives and risk-taking incentives, with the latter one playing a more dominant role and the risk-taking incentives of stock options, could be optimised when the non-executives granting proportion is larger, the granting range is limited, the incentive period is longer, the exercisable proportion is increasing, the price-to-strike ratio is lower and relatively loose performance assessment criteria are applied.

The conclusion reached in the study may provide valuable information to listed firms in designing and implementing the stock option plans.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of market competition on the relation between CEO inside debt and corporate risk-taking.

Ordinary least squares regressions are used to estimate the relation between CEO inside debt and firm risk. Additionally, instrumental variable (IV-GMM) regressions are used to check the robustness of the results.

The results of this paper indicate that CEO inside debt is negatively associated with the measures of future risk. However, this negative association is influenced by market competition. Specifically, CEO inside debt results in lower levels of firm risk when market competition is high. When market competition is low, inside debt has no effect on firm risk. Additional results show that CEOs with large inside debt tend to decrease R&D investments and financial leverage and increase firm cash holdings and working capital only when market competition is high. Overall, these results suggest that market competition significantly influences the effect of CEO inside debt on corporate risk-taking by changing the strength of incentives from inside debt.

CEO inside debt could be used to provide incentives to CEOs to manage corporate risk-taking.

The empirical results in this paper provide a practical tool to the boards of corporations to manage corporate risk-taking. The results suggest that boards can reduce excessive risk-taking by increasing the level of debt type compensation incentives. However, this strategy is effective only when market competition is high because in such markets inside debt provides the strongest incentives to reduce corporate risk. When competition is low, incentives from inside debt are ineffective in managing corporate risk-taking.

This is the first study that shows that the negative association between CEO inside debt and corporate risk-taking critically depends on the intensity of market competition.

This study aims to validate the link between production manipulation and a firm’s performance variability (fundamentals and stock returns). It explores whether executives' risk-taking incentives encourage production deviations around the normal level during uncertainty.

Utilizing panel data of manufacturing firms from Compustat over three decades, the study investigates production management practices during economic uncertainty. The Economic Policy Uncertainty Index (EPU) is employed as a key metric. The empirical strategy involves documenting the effect of economic uncertainty on overproduction and underproduction, examining the role of executive compensation and assessing the impact on risk.

The research finds that risk-taking incentives increase over/underproduction, particularly amplifying the extent of underproduction during uncertainty. Production deviation rises, indicating that firms take greater risk by engaging in abnormal business operations. The study’s results are robust against various econometric methods, emphasizing the influence of risk-taking incentives on corporate production decisions.

While providing valuable insights, the study acknowledges inherent limitations, including factors influencing production decisions beyond risk-taking incentives. Further research could explore additional determinants for a comprehensive understanding.

The findings highlight the potential dark side of executive compensation that motivates suboptimal risk-taking decisions, impacting risk, cost of capital and firm performance. Policymakers and compensation committees can use these insights to design efficient systems that mitigate moral hazard problems associated with productivity changes.

The study emphasizes the broader social implications of production manipulation under uncertainty. It prompts discussions on the ethical considerations of managerial opportunism, its potential consequences for stakeholders and market dynamics.

This study contributes to the literature by examining the role of economic uncertainty on production manipulation and the influence of risk-taking incentives. It extends the earnings management literature by considering real activity manipulation and emphasizing the importance of decomposing production deviation into positive and negative values.

The purpose of this paper is to review behavioral explanations of the empirical observation that investment managers in mutual fund companies increase their risk taking when offered incentives based on how their performance is ranked compared to peers.

A conceptual model is proposed of how research on social comparison, competition and financial risk taking may explain increased investor risk taking induced by rank-based incentives. Research findings in each of the strands of research are reviewed.

A proposed main explanation is that an above-average bias in comparing oneself with competitors results in overconfidence that increases risk taking. A complementary proposed explanation is that an anticipated loss when lagging behind increases risk taking, and another proposed complementary explanation the belief that risk taking is a winning strategy.

The results provide a broad framework for directions of research on social comparison processes in the mutual fund industry addressing the difficulties in implementing performance evaluations.

The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between regulation of non‐bank financial institutions and their risk‐taking behaviours in Ghana.

The analysis is performed using data derived from the Bank of Ghana Database during a five‐year period, 2006‐2010. Correlated Panels Corrected Standard Errors model is used to estimate the regression equation. Capital adequacy requirements and the restrictions on non‐bank financial institutions' (NBFIs') ability to take deposits are used as proxies for regulatory pressure. The study also used the ratio of risks weighted assets‐to‐total assets, the ratio of non‐performing loans‐to‐net loans and the Z‐scores of NBFIs as measures of risk.

The results of the study show a negative relationship between minimum capital adequacy requirement and the risks weighted assets of NBFIs. This indicates that, asking NBFIs to keep higher minimum capital adequacy ratio results in reducing their risk‐taking. The results also indicate a positive relationship between regulatory pressure and risk weighted assets of NBFIs. The paper however found a negative relationship between restrictions on deposits and the risk of insolvency. The findings suggest that, non‐deposit‐taking NBFIs have higher risk weighted assets and are more prone to the risk of insolvency than deposit‐taking NBFIs.

The value of this study is in respect of its contribution to the extant literature on financial regulation and risk‐taking of NBFIs.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how managerial risk-taking incentives affect the sensitivity of R&D investments to the availability of a firm’s internal finance.

The author studies a large panel sample of US firms from 1992 to 2013 using a dynamic structural model and estimates a system GMM estimator that accounts for unobserved firm-specific effects, and that allows the author to address the potential endogeneity of all of the financial and executive compensation variables.

Managerial risk-taking incentives, in particular CEO portfolio vega, have a significantly positive impact on the financial constraints that bind R&D investments. Moreover, the author finds that CEO portfolio vega has stronger impacts on the investment-cash flow sensitivity of R&D in firms that are more likely to face binding financial constraints.

Prior studies on the financial constraints of R&D investments do not consider the potential impact of executive compensation on R&D investments. The author complements this stream of literature by providing novel results showing that managerial risk-taking incentives have a significant impact on the severity of the financial constraints on R&D investments.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how social comparison and motivation to compete account for elevated risk-taking in fund management corroborated by asset market experiments when performance depends on rank-based incentives.

In two laboratory experiments, university students (n1 = 240/n2 = 120) make choices between risky and certain outcomes of hypothetical sums of money. Both experiments investigate in which direction risky choices in an individual condition (individual risk preference) are shifted when participants compare their performance to another participant's performance (social comparison), being instructed or not to outperform the other (incentive to compete).

In the absence of incentives to compete, participants tend to minimize the differences between expected outcomes to themselves and to the other, but when provided with incentives to compete, they tend to maximize these differences. An independent additional increase in risk-taking is observed when participants are provided with incentives to compete.

Original findings include that social comparison does not evoke motivation to compete unless incentives are offered and that increases in risk-taking depend both on what the other chooses and the incentives.

The paper aims to investigate corporate risk-taking following changes in firms' credit ratings (CR) and the mechanisms the firms use in implementing the risk-taking.

The paper employs fixed-effect regression models to examine risk-taking behaviour after firms experience changes in CR after their ratings are downgraded to the lower edge of the investment grade rating (i.e. BBB-) and after their CRs are downgraded below the investment rating.

The paper finds that, whilst in general, changes in CR are negatively associated with post-event risk-taking, firms downgraded to BBB- do not increase their risk-taking. Only when firms are rated below this grade, firms significantly increase their risk-taking, suggesting that the association between downgrades in CR and firm risk-taking following the event is not linear. Further analysis suggests that these downgraded firms do not increase research and development (R&D) expenses or capital expenditures but employ long-term debt as their risk-taking mechanism.

The findings of the paper have practical implications for investors considering investing in downgraded-rating firms to shareholders of such firms and especially to those overseeing the firms' risk-taking policies.

The study fills the gap in the literature by providing empirical evidence on corporate risk-taking after changes in CR and also contributes to the optimal debt-maturity choice literature.