We investigate the use of a warrant-pricing approach to incorporate employee stock options (ESOs) into equity valuation and to account for the dilutive effect of ESOs in the valuation of option grants for financial reporting purposes. Our valuation approach accounts for the jointly determined...

One of the arguments often used against expensing employee stock options is that calculating their fair value at the time they are granted is very difficult. This article presents an approach to calculating the value of employee stock options that is practical, easy to implement, and...

The usage of performance-vesting (p-v) equity awards to top executives in large U.S. companies has grown from 20 to 70 percent from 1998 to 2012. We measure the effects of p-v provisions on value, delta, and vega of equity-based compensation. We find large differences in the value of p-v awards...

We study the problem of hedging early exercise (American) options with respect to exponential utility within a general incomplete market model. This leads us to construct a duality formula involving relative entropy minimization and optimal stopping. We further consider claims with multiple...

This paper examines whether the risk-taking incentives induced by performance-based vesting (p-v) compensation influence bank loan contracting and credit ratings. Consistent with our risk-shifting hypothesis, we find that the p-v based compensation, as measured by the proportion of grant date...

Employee stock options (ESOs) have become an integral component of compensation in the U.S. In view of their significant cost to firms, the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) has mandated expensing ESOs since 2004. The main difficulty of ESO valuation lies in the uncertain timing of...

We present a valuation framework that captures the main characteristics of employee stock options (ESOs), which financial regulations now require to be expensed in firms' accounting statements. The value of these options is much less than Black-Scholes prices for corresponding market-traded...

We investigate the impact of independent valuation specialists on the downward bias of pre-initial public offering employee stock option valuations. Undervalued stock price estimates underlying firms' option grants produce option valuations that overstate earnings and provide employees with deep...

This study contributes to the valuation of employee stock options (ESO) in two ways. First, a new pricing model is presented, allowing a major part of calculations to be solved in closed form. It incorporates a vesting period and independent, forced terminations of the contract. Designed with a...

Canadian firms face a trade-off between reporting higher accounting income and paying lower taxes that arises from their ability to cancel in-the-money executive stock options and making a substitute cash payment to the executive instead of issuing shares. Firms' trade-off hypotheses are...