Advanced Search
MyIDEAS: Login

Stock-Based Compensation and CEO (Dis)Incentives

Contents:

Author Info

  • Efraim Benmelech

    (Harvard University and National Bureau of Economic Research.)

  • Eugene Kandel

    (University of Chicago, Center for Economic and Policy Research, and National Bureau of Economic Research.)

  • Pietro Veronesi

    (Hebrew University and Center for Economic and Policy Research.)

Abstract

The use of stock-based compensation as a solution to agency problems between shareholders and managers has increased dramatically since the early 1990s. We show that in a dynamic rational expectations model with asymmetric information, stock-based compensation not only induces managers to exert costly effort, but also induces them to conceal bad news about future growth options and to choose suboptimal investment policies to support the pretense. This leads to a severe overvaluation and a subsequent crash in the stock price. Our model produces many predictions that are consistent with the empirical evidence and are relevant to understanding the current crisis. (c) 2010 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology..

Download Info

If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the proper application to view it first. In case of further problems read the IDEAS help page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
File URL: http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1162/qjec.2010.125.4.1769
File Function: link to full text
Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version under "Related research" (further below) or search for a different version of it.

Bibliographic Info

Article provided by MIT Press in its journal Quarterly Journal of Economics.

Volume (Year): 125 (2010)
Issue (Month): 4 (November)
Pages: 1769-1820

as in new window
Handle: RePEc:tpr:qjecon:v:125:y:2010:i:4:p:1769-1820

Contact details of provider:
Web page: http://mitpress.mit.edu/journals/

Order Information:
Web: http://mitpress.mit.edu/journal-home.tcl?issn=00335533

Related research

Keywords:

Other versions of this item:

Find related papers by JEL classification:

References

References listed on IDEAS
Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
as in new window
  1. Miller, Merton H & Rock, Kevin, 1985. " Dividend Policy under Asymmetric Information," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 40(4), pages 1031-51, September.
  2. Gabaix, Xavier & Landier, Augustin, 2008. "Why Has CEO Pay Increased So Much?," Open Access publications from University of Toulouse 1 Capitole http://neeo.univ-tlse1.fr, University of Toulouse 1 Capitole.
  3. Burns, Natasha & Kedia, Simi, 2006. "The impact of performance-based compensation on misreporting," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 79(1), pages 35-67, January.
  4. Eisfeldt, Andrea L. & Rampini, Adriano A., 2008. "Managerial incentives, capital reallocation, and the business cycle," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 87(1), pages 177-199, January.
  5. Patrick Bolton & Jose Scheinkman & Wei Xiong, 2003. "Executive Compensation and Short-termist Behavior in Speculative Markets," NBER Working Papers 9722, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  6. Graham, John R. & Harvey, Campbell R. & Rajgopal, Shiva, 2005. "The economic implications of corporate financial reporting," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 40(1-3), pages 3-73, December.
  7. Murphy, Kevin J., 2003. "Stock-based pay in new economy firms," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 34(1-3), pages 129-147, January.
  8. Zeira, Joseph, 1999. "Informational overshooting, booms, and crashes," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 43(1), pages 237-257, February.
  9. Brian J. Hall & Kevin J. Murphy, 2003. "The Trouble with Stock Options," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 17(3), pages 49-70, Summer.
  10. Brian J. Hall & Kevin J. Murphy, 2003. "The Trouble with Stock Options," NBER Working Papers 9784, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  11. Simi Kedia & Thomas Philippon, 2005. "The Economics of Fraudulent Accounting," NBER Working Papers 11573, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  12. Bebchuk, Lucian Arye & Stole, Lars A, 1993. " Do Short-Term Objectives Lead to Under- or Overinvestment in Long-Term Projects?," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 48(2), pages 719-29, June.
  13. Murphy, Kevin J., 1999. "Executive compensation," Handbook of Labor Economics, in: O. Ashenfelter & D. Card (ed.), Handbook of Labor Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 38, pages 2485-2563 Elsevier.
  14. Easterbrook, Frank H, 1984. "Two Agency-Cost Explanations of Dividends," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 74(4), pages 650-59, September.
  15. Bengt Holmstrom, 1979. "Moral Hazard and Observability," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 10(1), pages 74-91, Spring.
  16. Bergstresser, Daniel & Philippon, Thomas, 2006. "CEO incentives and earnings management," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 80(3), pages 511-529, June.
  17. Brian J. Hall & Jeffrey B. Liebman, 1998. "Are CEOs Really Paid Like Bureaucrats?," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, MIT Press, vol. 113(3), pages 653-691, August.
  18. Healy, Paul M., 1985. "The effect of bonus schemes on accounting decisions," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 7(1-3), pages 85-107, April.
  19. Michael C. Jensen, 2005. "Agency Costs of Overvalued Equity," Financial Management, Financial Management Association, vol. 34(1), Spring.
Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

Citations

Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
as in new window

Cited by:
  1. Frydman, Carola & Jenter, Dirk, 2010. "CEO Compensation," Research Papers 2069, Stanford University, Graduate School of Business.
  2. Kim, Jeong-Bon & Li, Yinghua & Zhang, Liandong, 2011. "CFOs versus CEOs: Equity incentives and crashes," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 101(3), pages 713-730, September.
  3. Alessandra Bonfiglioli & Gino Gancia, . "Growth, Selection and Appropriate Contracts," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics.
  4. Giannetti, Mariassunta, 2007. "Serial CEO Incentives and the Structure of Managerial Contracts," CEPR Discussion Papers 6422, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
  5. Peng, Lin & Röell, Ailsa A, 2009. "Managerial Incentives and Stock Price Manipulation," CEPR Discussion Papers 7442, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
  6. Robert Jones & Yan Wu, 2010. "Executive compensation, earnings management and shareholder litigation," Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, Springer, vol. 35(1), pages 1-20, July.

Lists

This item is not listed on Wikipedia, on a reading list or among the top items on IDEAS.

Statistics

Access and download statistics

Corrections

When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:tpr:qjecon:v:125:y:2010:i:4:p:1769-1820

For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Karie Kirkpatrick).

If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

If references are entirely missing, you can add them using this form.

If the full references list an item that is present in RePEc, but the system did not link to it, you can help with this form.

If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.