While the literature appeals to efficiency arguments from agency theory to explain the relative rise of CEO equity compensation, prior work has given less focus to CEO pay contracts based on equity and cash incentives that directly (analytically) maximize the total return of firm owners. The...

While theorists differ sharply on the expected economic impact of stock options, typically empirical work has found a positive association between option schemes and firm productivity. However, existing data are limited and may not enable reliable investigation of the productivity effects of...

Focusing on Spanish firms, we investigate how investors incorporate the value of a firm's outstanding employee stock options (ESO hereafter) into its stock price. Aboody (1996) analyzes the same issue on US data, however our approach differs in two ways. First, we value ESO grants using Hull...

I examine how stock-based compensation for CEOs is designed following corporate acquisitions conditional on the economic nature of acquisitions. Large conglomerate acquisitions are the type of events that represent significant changes in the economic environment of the company. Therefore, it is...

High-profile corporate scandals earlier in this decade provoked outrage and legislative action, however corporate executive-level ethical lapses continue to come to light. This article examines the work of Professor Dunfee and his co-authors on corruption, ethical leadership, and social...

In this paper we study whether stock option schemes affect firm technical inefficiency. We estimate Cobb-Douglas stochastic production frontier models using a novel panel data set on the publicly listed Finnish firms in the manufacturing and ICT sectors over the period from 1992 to 2002. We find...

We examine the potential confounding effects that awarding outside directors stock options may have on the quality of financial disclosure. By aligning their interests with those of shareholders, directors should be more inclined to monitor and disclose relevant information to investors....

This paper aims to provide empirical evidence on the effects of CEO's share option remuneration and CEO's stock ownership on leasing. Financial contracting theory suggests that ownership structure is important determinant of capital structure, debt financing and leasing. Also, lease financing is...

For the past 30 years, the conventional wisdom has been that executive compensation packages should include very large proportions of incentive pay. This incentive pay orthodoxy has become so firmly entrenched that the current debates about executive compensation simply take it as a given. We...

As the debate over appropriate compensation disclosure continues, some firms have volunteered to recognize stock option costs within their income statements. On the one hand, stock option expensing can significantly enhance the legitimacy of the organization and restore shareholders' confidence...