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...

A market-leveraged stock unit (MSU) is a form of employee compensation in which the number of shares received on the vesting date depends on the stock price at that time. MSUs have been proposed as a way of overcoming some of the drawbacks of stock options and restricted stock units. In this...

We study the motive of using equity-based pay in executive compensation: the risk-sharing motive versus the performance-measuring motive. The empirical design goes through the relationship between equity-based pay and stock price informativeness (SPI). We find equity-based pay decreases in SPI,...