Employee stock options (ESOs) are American-style call options that can be terminated early due to employment shock. This paper studies an ESO valuation framework that accounts for job termination risk and jumps in the company stock price. Under general Levy stock price dynamics, we show that a...

We propose a new framework to value employee stock options (ESOs) that captures multiple exercises of different quantities over time. We also model the ESO holder's job termination risk and incorporate its impact on the payoffs of both vested and unvested ESOs. Numerical methods based on Fourier...

Traditional stock option grant is the most common form of incentive pay in executive compensation. Applying a principal-agent analysis, we find this common practice suboptimal and firms are better off linking incentive pay to average stock prices. Holding the cost of the option grant to the firm...

It is often argued that Black-Scholes (1973) values overstate the subjective value of stock options granted to risk-averse and under-diversified executives. We construct a "representative" Swiss executive and extend the certainty- equivalence approach presented by Hall and Murphy (2002) to...

This paper examines the information content of stock option exercises versus regular insider share trades by corporate executives. We argue that the asymmetric payoff structure of options makes managerial wealth – compared to holdings of shares – relatively more sensitive to stock price...

Option grant vesting terms are a contractual provision that is shaped by accounting standards and other economic factors. We examine the effect of accounting standards, specifically SFAS 123(R), on the vesting terms of stock option grants while also modeling other economic determinants of this...

Option grant vesting terms are a contractual provision that is shaped by accounting standards and other economic factors. We examine the effect of accounting standards, specifically SFAS 123(R), on the vesting terms of stock option grants while also modeling other economic determinants of this...

We address two apparent paradoxes of risk management: (1) managers hedge in order to avoid negative earnings surprises, yet they tend to hedge risks uninformative of the value of the company; and (2) the presence of options in managers' compensation distorts their incentive to hedge, inducing...

The Financial Accounting Standards Board and the United States Congress enacted new legislation and regulations in 2002 requiring corporations to recognize stock option grants as an expense (voluntarily) on their financial statements. In 2004 option, expensing became mandatory. This paper...

We examine the impact of the cultural norm of uncertainty avoidance on employee stock option (ESO) exercise behaviour using proprietary data from a multinational firm. We find that employees from countries with higher levels of uncertainty avoidance exercise their stock options earlier. These...