IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ecl/upafin/13-18.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Seeking Alpha, Taking Risk: Evidence from Non-executive Pay in U.S. Bank Holding Companies

Author

Listed:
  • Acharya, Viral

    (NYU)

  • Litov, Lubomir P.

    (University of AZ and University of PA)

  • Sepe, Simone M.

    (University of AZ and Institute for Advanced Studies in Toulouse)

Abstract

We investigate whether incentives provided to non-executives in U.S. bank holding companies (BHCs) in 2003-2006 are related to BHC risk and BHC value during the crisis of 2007-2009. To this end, we introduce measures of non-executive incentives based on the elasticity of BHC compensation, net of executive pay, to BHC performance. We find that higher non-executive compensation elasticity is associated with higher subsequent BHC risk and lower subsequent BHC value. These effects are robust to controlling for executive incentives. We also document that the association between non-executive incentives and BHC risk is mainly driven by incentives specific to peer group performance. Overall these findings support the hypothesis that bank competition for non-executives was largely responsible for the distortions in bank compensation and the accumulation of long-term risks that emerged during the crisis.

Suggested Citation

  • Acharya, Viral & Litov, Lubomir P. & Sepe, Simone M., 2014. "Seeking Alpha, Taking Risk: Evidence from Non-executive Pay in U.S. Bank Holding Companies," Working Papers 13-18, University of Pennsylvania, Wharton School, Weiss Center.
    • Handle: RePEc:ecl:upafin:13-18
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://fic.wharton.upenn.edu/fic/papers/13/13-18.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Charles F. Manski, 1993. "Identification of Endogenous Social Effects: The Reflection Problem," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 60(3), pages 531-542.
    2. Michiel Bijlsma & Jan Boone & Gijsbert Zwart, 2018. "Competition for traders and risk," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 49(4), pages 855-876, December.
    3. Fama, Eugene F & French, Kenneth R, 1992. "The Cross-Section of Expected Stock Returns," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 47(2), pages 427-465, June.
    4. Viral V. Acharya & Lasse H. Pedersen & Thomas Philippon & Matthew Richardson, 2017. "Measuring Systemic Risk," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 30(1), pages 2-47.
    5. Chiesa, Gabriella & Denicolò, Vincenzo, 2009. "Trading with a common agent under complete information: A characterization of Nash equilibria," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 144(1), pages 296-311, January.
    6. Laeven, Luc & Levine, Ross, 2009. "Bank governance, regulation and risk taking," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 93(2), pages 259-275, August.
    7. Shawn Cole & Martin Kanz & Leora Klapper, 2015. "Incentivizing Calculated Risk-Taking: Evidence from an Experiment with Commercial Bank Loan Officers," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 70(2), pages 537-575, April.
    8. Jonathan Levin, 2003. "Relational Incentive Contracts," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 93(3), pages 835-857, June.
    9. Mark T. Leary & Michael R. Roberts, 2014. "Do Peer Firms Affect Corporate Financial Policy?," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 69(1), pages 139-178, February.
    10. Oyer, Paul & Schaefer, Scott, 2005. "Why do some firms give stock options to all employees?: An empirical examination of alternative theories," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 76(1), pages 99-133, April.
    11. Arellano, Manuel & Bover, Olympia, 1995. "Another look at the instrumental variable estimation of error-components models," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 68(1), pages 29-51, July.
    12. Ing-Haw Cheng & Harrison Hong & Jose A. Scheinkman, 2010. "Yesterday's Heroes: Compensation and Creative Risk-Taking," NBER Working Papers 16176, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    13. Keeley, Michael C, 1990. "Deposit Insurance, Risk, and Market Power in Banking," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 80(5), pages 1183-1200, December.
    14. Bramoullé, Yann & Djebbari, Habiba & Fortin, Bernard, 2009. "Identification of peer effects through social networks," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 150(1), pages 41-55, May.
    15. Demirguc-Kunt, Asli & Detragiache, Enrica, 2002. "Does deposit insurance increase banking system stability? An empirical investigation," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 49(7), pages 1373-1406, October.
    16. Landier, Augustin & Sraer, David & Thesmar, David, 2011. "The risk-Shifting Hypothesis : Evidence from Subprime Originations," TSE Working Papers 11-279, Toulouse School of Economics (TSE).
    17. repec:fip:fedhpr:y:2010:i:may:p:65-71 is not listed on IDEAS
    18. Jian Cai & Kent Cherny & Todd T. Milbourn, 2010. "Compensation and risk incentives in banking and finance," Economic Commentary, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, issue Sep.
    19. Rebecca Demsetz & Marc R. Saidenberg & Philip E. Strahan, 1997. "Agency problems and risk taking at banks," Research Paper 9709, Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
    20. Rebecca Demsetz & Marc R. Saidenberg & Philip E. Strahan, 1997. "Agency problems and risk taking at banks," Staff Reports 29, Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
    21. Fahlenbrach, Rüdiger & Stulz, René M., 2011. "Bank CEO incentives and the credit crisis," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 99(1), pages 11-26, January.
    22. Andrew Hertzberg & Jose Maria Liberti & Daniel Paravisini, 2010. "Information and Incentives Inside the Firm: Evidence from Loan Officer Rotation," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 65(3), pages 795-828, June.
    23. Viral Acharya & Marco Pagano & Paolo Volpin, 2016. "Seeking Alpha: Excess Risk Taking and Competition for Managerial Talent," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 29(10), pages 2565-2599.
    24. Manuel Arellano & Stephen Bond, 1991. "Some Tests of Specification for Panel Data: Monte Carlo Evidence and an Application to Employment Equations," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 58(2), pages 277-297.
    25. Core, John E. & Guay, Wayne R., 2001. "Stock option plans for non-executive employees," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 61(2), pages 253-287, August.
    26. Landier, Augustin & Sraer, David & Thesmar, David, 2011. "The risk-Shifting Hypothesis," IDEI Working Papers 699, Institut d'Économie Industrielle (IDEI), Toulouse.
    27. Blundell, Richard & Bond, Stephen, 1998. "Initial conditions and moment restrictions in dynamic panel data models," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 87(1), pages 115-143, August.
    28. Timothy Besley & Maitreesh Ghatak, 2013. "Bailouts and the Optimal Taxation of Bonus Pay," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 103(3), pages 163-167, May.
    29. Tzioumis, Konstantinos & Gee, Matthew, 2013. "Nonlinear incentives and mortgage officers’ decisions," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 107(2), pages 436-453.
    30. Sumit Agarwal & Faye H. Wang, 2009. "Perverse incentives at the banks? Evidence from a natural experiment," Working Paper Series WP-09-08, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago.
    31. Ilya Segal, 1999. "Complexity and Renegotiation: A Foundation for Incomplete Contracts," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 66(1), pages 57-82.
    32. Mark Carey & Anil K Kashyap & Raghuram Rajan & René M. Stulz, 2010. "Market Institutions, Financial Market Risks, and the Financial Crisis," NBER Chapters, in: Market Institutions and Financial Market Risk, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    33. Demsetz, Rebecca S & Strahan, Philip E, 1997. "Diversification, Size, and Risk at Bank Holding Companies," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 29(3), pages 300-313, August.
    34. Houston, Joel F. & Lin, Chen & Lin, Ping & Ma, Yue, 2010. "Creditor rights, information sharing, and bank risk taking," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 96(3), pages 485-512, June.
    35. Andrew Ellul & Vijay Yerramilli, 2013. "Stronger Risk Controls, Lower Risk: Evidence from U.S. Bank Holding Companies," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 68(5), pages 1757-1803, October.
    36. John Core & Wayne Guay, 2002. "Estimating the Value of Employee Stock Option Portfolios and Their Sensitivities to Price and Volatility," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 40(3), pages 613-630, June.
    37. Ben-David, Itzhak & Agarwal, Sumit, 2012. "Do Loan Officers' Incentives Lead to Lax Lending Standards?," Working Paper Series 2012-07, Ohio State University, Charles A. Dice Center for Research in Financial Economics.
    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


    Cited by:

    1. Bertay, Ata Can & Uras, Burak R., 2020. "Leverage, bank employee compensation and institutions," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 111(C).
    2. Efing, Matthias & Hau, Harald & Kampkötter, Patrick & Steinbrecher, Johannes, 2015. "Incentive pay and bank risk-taking: Evidence from Austrian, German, and Swiss banks," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 96(S1), pages 123-140.
    3. repec:zbw:bofrdp:2015_005 is not listed on IDEAS
    4. Ongena, Steven & Savaşer, Tanseli & Şişli Ciamarra, Elif, 2022. "CEO incentives and bank risk over the business cycle," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 138(C).
    5. repec:bof:bofrdp:urn:nbn:fi:bof-201503041096 is not listed on IDEAS
    6. Gropp, Reint E. & Park, Kyounghoon, 2016. "To Separate or not to Separate Investment from Commercial Banking? An Empirical Analysis of Attention Distortion under Multiple Tasks," IWH Discussion Papers 2/2016, Halle Institute for Economic Research (IWH).
    7. repec:zbw:bofrdp:urn:nbn:fi:bof-201503041096 is not listed on IDEAS
    8. Jokivuolle, Esa & Keppo, Jussi & Yuan, Xuchuan, 2015. "Bonus caps, deferrals and bankers' risk-taking," Research Discussion Papers 5/2015, Bank of Finland.
    9. Jarque, Arantxa & Prescott, Edward Simpson, 2020. "Banker compensation, relative performance, and bank risk," Journal of the Japanese and International Economies, Elsevier, vol. 56(C).
    10. Saad Azmat & A. S. M. Sohel Azad & M. Ishaq Bhatti & Hamza Ghaffar, 2020. "Islamic Banking, Costly Religiosity, And Competition," Journal of Financial Research, Southern Finance Association;Southwestern Finance Association, vol. 43(2), pages 263-303, May.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Efing, Matthias & Hau, Harald & Kampkötter, Patrick & Steinbrecher, Johannes, 2015. "Incentive pay and bank risk-taking: Evidence from Austrian, German, and Swiss banks," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 96(S1), pages 123-140.
    2. Bhagat, Sanjai & Bolton, Brian & Lu, Jun, 2015. "Size, leverage, and risk-taking of financial institutions," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 59(C), pages 520-537.
    3. Chen, Minghua & Wu, Ji & Jeon, Bang Nam & Wang, Rui, 2017. "Do foreign banks take more risk? Evidence from emerging economies," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 82(C), pages 20-39.
    4. Cristian BARRA & Roberto ZOTTI, 2019. "Bank Performance, Financial Stability And Market Concentration: Evidence From Cooperative And Non‐Cooperative Banks," Annals of Public and Cooperative Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 90(1), pages 103-139, March.
    5. Whelsy Boungou, 2019. "Negative Interest Rates, Bank Profitability and Risk-taking," Working Papers hal-03456106, HAL.
    6. Sascha Tobias Wengerek & Benjamin Hippert & André Uhde, 2019. "Risk allocation through securitization - Evidence from non-performing loans," Working Papers Dissertations 58, Paderborn University, Faculty of Business Administration and Economics.
    7. Ben Bouheni, Faten & Hasnaoui, Amir, 2017. "Cyclical behavior of the financial stability of eurozone commercial banks," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 67(C), pages 392-408.
    8. Adhikari, Binay Kumar & Agrawal, Anup, 2016. "Does local religiosity matter for bank risk-taking?," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 38(C), pages 272-293.
    9. Tu Nguyen & Sandy Suardi & Jing Zhao, 2021. "Employee Treatment and Bank Default Risk during the Credit Crisis," Journal of Financial Services Research, Springer;Western Finance Association, vol. 59(3), pages 173-208, June.
    10. Horváth, Bálint L., 2020. "The interaction of bank regulation and taxation," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 64(C).
    11. Agyenim Boateng & Vu Hong Thai Nguyen & Min Du & Frank O. Kwabi, 2022. "The impact of CEO compensation and excess reserves on bank risk-taking: the moderating role of monetary policy," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 62(4), pages 1575-1598, April.
    12. Noman, Abu Hanifa Md. & Gee, Chan Sok & Isa, Che Ruhana, 2018. "Does bank regulation matter on the relationship between competition and financial stability? Evidence from Southeast Asian countries," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 48(C), pages 144-161.
    13. Woon Sau Leung & Nicholas Taylor, 2013. "Testing for contagion: the impact of US structured markets on international financial markets," Chapters, in: Adrian R. Bell & Chris Brooks & Marcel Prokopczuk (ed.), Handbook of Research Methods and Applications in Empirical Finance, chapter 11, pages 256-284, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    14. Renata Karkowska & Jan Acedański, 2020. "The effect of corporate board attributes on bank stability," Portuguese Economic Journal, Springer;Instituto Superior de Economia e Gestao, vol. 19(2), pages 99-137, May.
    15. Kalyvas, Antonios Nikolaos & Mamatzakis, Emmanuel, 2014. "Does business regulation matter for banks in the European Union?," Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money, Elsevier, vol. 32(C), pages 278-324.
    16. Liangliang Jiang & Ross Levine & Chen Lin, 2023. "Does Competition Affect Bank Risk?," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 55(5), pages 1043-1076, August.
    17. Agoraki, Maria-Eleni K. & Kouretas, Georgios P., 2021. "Loan growth, ownership, and regulation in the European Banking Sector: Old versus new banking landscape," Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money, Elsevier, vol. 75(C).
    18. Marwa Sallemi & Salah Ben Hamad & Nejla Ould Daoud Ellili, 2023. "Executive compensation and bank’s stability: which role of the corruption control? An empirical evidence from OECD banks," Journal of Management & Governance, Springer;Accademia Italiana di Economia Aziendale (AIDEA), vol. 27(2), pages 457-477, June.
    19. Leung, Woon Sau & Song, Wei & Chen, Jie, 2019. "Does bank stakeholder orientation enhance financial stability?," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 56(C), pages 38-63.
    20. Woon Sau Leung & Wei Song & Jie Chen, 2018. "Does Bank Stakeholder Orientation Enhance Financial Stability? Evidence from a Natural Experiment," Working Papers 2018-14, Swansea University, School of Management.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ecl:upafin:13-18. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    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 CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc 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 RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/wcupaus.html .

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

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.