A new, long and rich panel data set consisting of all Finnish publicly traded firms is used to study how firm characteristics and stock market developments influence the adoption and targeting of stock option compensation. Stock option adoption is found to be a pro-cyclical phenomenon. Findings...

An entrepreneur with information about firm quality seeks financing from an uninformed investor in order to pay a worker. I show that if the worker, too, knows the true quality of the firm, then certain long term wage agreements can credibly signal firm quality. Such wage agreements have a low...

The granting of stock options to employees who have negligible impact on company performance intuitively violates Holmstrom's (1979) sufficient statistic result. This paper revisits the sufficient statistic question of when to condition a contract on an outside signal in a principal-agent model...

Firms often give away free goods with the product that they sell. Firms often give stock options to their top management and other employees. Mixing these two practices-giving stock options to consumers who buy the firm's product-, creates a deadly brew. Large numbers of consumers can be lured...

Aktienoptionen haben als Vergütungsbestandteil von Führungskräften in den letzten Jahren auch in Deutschland eine stark zunehmende Verbreitung erfahren. Entwickelt sich der Aktienwert des Unternehmens positiv, erhält die Führungskraft hierdurch ein zusätzliches Entgelt. Liegt der...

A worker's utility may increase in his own income, but envy can make his utility decline with his employer's income. Such behavior may call for high-powered incentives, so that increased effort by the worker little increases the income of his employer. This paper uses a principalagent model to...

The relationship between CEO pay and performance has been much analyzed in the management and economics literature. This study analyzes the structure of executive compensation in family and non-family firms. In line with predictions of agency theory, it is found that the share of base salary is...

Although stock options are commonly observed in chief executive o±cer (CEO) compensation contracts, there is theoretical controversy about whether stock options are part of the optimal contract. Using a sample of Fortune 500 companies, we solve an agency model calibrated to the company-specific...

In recent years stock option plans (SOPs) have become an important component of managerial remuneration in most industrialized countries. Commonly accepted, corporate as well as individual taxes have a major impact on the costs of a SOP. In contrast, the tax influence on the benefits of a SOP...

The debate on convergence and globalisation of national economies emphasises the role of Multinational Corporations (MNCs) with regard to the export of homecountry policies in countries where they have their plants. MNCs set a process of change in motion in which local companies attempt to catch...