Accounting for employee stock options (ESOs) is controversial, with many arguing that it has substantial economic consequences. Such arguments rely on the assumption that one or more interested parties fixate on accounting numbers and fail to understand the real costs and benefits of ESOs. We...

Previous research offers little large-sample evidence on the magnitude of non-financial firms' risk exposure hedged by financial derivatives. Among 234 large non-financial derivatives users, if the median firm simultaneously experiences a three standard deviation change in interest rates,...

The costs associated with compiling data on employee stock option portfolios is a substantial obstacle in investigating the impact of stock options on managerial incentives, accounting choice, financing decisions, and the valuation of equity. We present an accurate method of estimating option...

We analyze a model of voluntary disclosure where investors impose a discount for uncertainty about firm value. We find a commitment to conservative reporting, defined as a requirement that firms disclose bad realizations of economic events, results in firm prices being higher on average....

We predict and find that firms use annual grants of options and restricted stock to CEOs to manage the optimal level of equity incentives. We model optimal equity incentive levels for CEOs, and use the residuals from this model to measure deviations between CEOs' holdings of equity incentives...

Considerable research has documented the role of debt covenants and conservative financial accounting in addressing agency conflicts between lenders and borrowers. Beatty, Weber and Yu (BWY, 2008) document interesting, but mixed, findings on the relation between debt covenants and conservative...