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...

The volatility information content of stock options for individual firms is measured using option prices for 149 U.S. firms and the S&P 100 index. ARCH and regression models are used to compare volatility forecasts defined by historical stock returns, at-the-money implied volatilities and...

We investigate the association of various firm-specific and market-wide factors with the riskneutral skewness (RNS) implied by the prices of individual stock options. Our analysis covers 149 U.S. firms over a four-year period. Our choice of firms is based on adequate liquidity and trading...

In diesem Aufsatz untersuchen wir das Wachstum der Vorstandsvergütung in den vergangenen 15 Jahren und stellen uns die Frage, wie sich die Vorstandsvergütung in der Zukunft entwickeln könnte. Wir vermuten, dass die Einführung von Long-Term-Incentives (LTI) in Form von Aktienoptionsplänen,...

The incentive stock options (ISOs) are similar to the regular stock call options. However, when one considers various taxing laws regarding the ISO stocks, the ISOs have unique features differentiated from the regular stock call options. In general, no income from ISOs is realized, for tax...

A worker's utility may increase with his income, but envy can make his utility decline with his employer's income. This article uses a principal-agent model to study profit-maximizing contracts when a worker envies his employer. Envy tightens the worker's participation constraint and so calls...

This paper investigates whether observed executive compensation contracts are designed to provide risk-taking incentives in addition to effort incentives. We develop a stylized principal-agent model that captures the interdependence between firm risk and managerial incentives. We calibrate the...

Venture capital has become a dominant form of innovation finance, used by many high-tech startups. Europe lags the U.S. in both VC activity and the creation of successful startups, and has recently been surpassed by China. Few European countries have rates of VC activity commensurable to their...

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...