IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/
MyIDEAS: Log in (now much improved!) to save this article

Seeking safety: The relation between CEO inside debt holdings and the riskiness of firm investment and financial policies

Author Info

Listed author(s):
  • Cassell, Cory A.
  • Huang, Shawn X.
  • Manuel Sanchez, Juan
  • Stuart, Michael D.
Registered author(s):

    Abstract

    CEO inside debt holdings (pension benefits and deferred compensation) are generally unsecured and unfunded liabilities of the firm. Because these characteristics of inside debt expose the CEO to default risk similar to that faced by outside creditors, theory predicts that CEOs with large inside debt holdings will display lower levels of risk-seeking behavior (Jensen and Meckling, 1976). Consistent with the theoretical predictions, we find a negative association between CEO inside debt holdings and the volatility of future firm stock returns, R&D expenditures, and financial leverage, and a positive association between CEO inside debt holdings and the extent of diversification and asset liquidity. Collectively, our results provide empirical evidence suggesting that CEOs with large inside debt holdings prefer investment and financial policies that are less risky.

    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.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304405X11002406
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

    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.

    Article provided by Elsevier in its journal Journal of Financial Economics.

    Volume (Year): 103 (2012)
    Issue (Month): 3 ()
    Pages: 588-610

    as
    in new window

    Handle: RePEc:eee:jfinec:v:103:y:2012:i:3:p:588-610
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jfineco.2011.10.008
    Contact details of provider: Web page: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/inca/505576

    Keywords: Inside debt; Pensions; Deferred compensation; CEO incentives; Risk-seeking behavior;

    Find related papers by JEL classification:

    • G32 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance - - - Financing Policy; Financial Risk and Risk Management; Capital and Ownership Structure; Value of Firms; Goodwill
    • G33 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance - - - Bankruptcy; Liquidation

    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. Patrick Bolton & Hamid Mehran & Joel Shapiro, 2015. "Executive Compensation and Risk Taking," Review of Finance, European Finance Association, vol. 19(6), pages 2139-2181.
    2. Bebchuk, Lucian A. & Cohen, Alma, 2005. "The costs of entrenched boards," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 78(2), pages 409-433, November.
    3. Yakov Amihud & Baruch Lev, 1981. "Risk Reduction as a Managerial Motive for Conglomerate Mergers," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 12(2), pages 605-617, Autumn.
    4. Jacquemin, Alexis P & Berry, Charles H, 1979. "Entropy Measure of Diversification and Corporate Growth," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 27(4), pages 359-369, June.
    5. Yexiao Xu & Burton G. Malkiel, 2003. "Investigating the Behavior of Idiosyncratic Volatility," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 76(4), pages 613-644, October.
    6. Hirshleifer, David & Thakor, Anjan V, 1992. "Managerial Conservatism, Project Choice, and Debt," Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 5(3), pages 437-470.
    7. Lubos PÁstor & Veronesi Pietro, 2003. "Stock Valuation and Learning about Profitability," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 58(5), pages 1749-1790, October.
    8. Alex Edmans & Qi Liu, 2011. "Inside Debt," Review of Finance, European Finance Association, vol. 15(1), pages 75-102.
    9. Robert C. Merton, 2005. "Theory of rational option pricing," World Scientific Book Chapters,in: Theory Of Valuation, chapter 8, pages 229-288 World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    10. Laeven, Luc & Levine, Ross, 2009. "Bank governance, regulation and risk taking," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 93(2), pages 259-275, August.
    11. Morck, Randall & Shleifer, Andrei & Vishny, Robert W., 1988. "Management ownership and market valuation," Scholarly Articles 29407535, Harvard University Department of Economics.
    12. Richard A. Lambert, 1986. "Executive Effort and Selection of Risky Projects," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 17(1), pages 77-88, Spring.
    13. Brander, J.A. & Poitevin, M., 1988. "Managerial Compensation And The Agency Costs Of Debt Finance," Cahiers de recherche 8827, Centre interuniversitaire de recherche en économie quantitative, CIREQ.
    14. Tarun Khanna & Krishna Palepu, 2000. "Is Group Affiliation Profitable in Emerging Markets? An Analysis of Diversified Indian Business Groups," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 55(2), pages 867-891, 04.
    15. John, Teresa A & John, Kose, 1993. " Top-Management Compensation and Capital Structure," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 48(3), pages 949-974, July.
    16. Mitchell A. Petersen, 2009. "Estimating Standard Errors in Finance Panel Data Sets: Comparing Approaches," Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 22(1), pages 435-480, January.
    17. Mehran, Hamid, 1995. "Executive compensation structure, ownership, and firm performance," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 38(2), pages 163-184, June.
    18. Bruce, Donald & Fox, William F. & Yang, Zhou, 2010. "Base Mobility and State Personal Income Taxes," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association, vol. 63(4), pages 945-966, December.
    19. Lewellen, Katharina, 2006. "Financing decisions when managers are risk averse," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 82(3), pages 551-589, December.
    20. McConnell, John J. & Servaes, Henri, 1990. "Additional evidence on equity ownership and corporate value," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 27(2), pages 595-612, October.
    21. repec:bla:joares:v:25:y:1987:i::p:85-129 is not listed on IDEAS
    22. Low, Angie, 2009. "Managerial risk-taking behavior and equity-based compensation," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 92(3), pages 470-490, June.
    23. Opler, Tim & Pinkowitz, Lee & Stulz, Rene & Williamson, Rohan, 1999. "The determinants and implications of corporate cash holdings," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 52(1), pages 3-46, April.
    24. Antia, Murad & Pantzalis, Christos & Park, Jung Chul, 2010. "CEO decision horizon and firm performance: An empirical investigation," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 16(3), pages 288-301, June.
    25. repec:bla:joares:v:18:y:1980:i:1:p:109-131 is not listed on IDEAS
    26. Kose John & Lubomir Litov & Bernard Yeung, 2008. "Corporate Governance and Risk-Taking," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 63(4), pages 1679-1728, 08.
    27. Rajgopal, Shivaram & Shevlin, Terry, 2002. "Empirical evidence on the relation between stock option compensation and risk taking," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 33(2), pages 145-171, June.
    28. Sudheer Chava & Praveen Kumar & Arthur Warga, 2010. "Managerial Agency and Bond Covenants," Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 23(3), pages 1120-1148, March.
    29. Haugen, Robert A & Senbet, Lemma W, 1981. "Resolving the Agency Problems of External Capital through Options," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 36(3), pages 629-647, June.
    30. John Core, 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, 06.
    31. repec:bla:joares:v:33:y:1995:i::p:101-128 is not listed on IDEAS
    32. Agrawal, Anup & Mandelker, Gershon N, 1987. " Managerial Incentives and Corporate Investment and Financing Decision s," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 42(4), pages 823-837, September.
    33. White, Halbert, 1980. "A Heteroskedasticity-Consistent Covariance Matrix Estimator and a Direct Test for Heteroskedasticity," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 48(4), pages 817-838, May.
    34. Daniel Feenberg & Elisabeth Coutts, 1993. "An introduction to the TAXSIM model," Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 12(1), pages 189-194.
    35. Core, John & Guay, Wayne, 1999. "The use of equity grants to manage optimal equity incentive levels," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 28(2), pages 151-184, December.
    36. Hanlon, Michelle & Rajgopal, Shivaram & Shevlin, Terry, 2003. "Are executive stock options associated with future earnings?," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 36(1-3), pages 3-43, December.
    37. Stephen Hymer & Peter Pashigian, 1962. "Firm Size and Rate of Growth," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 70, pages 556-556.
    38. Coles, Jeffrey L. & Daniel, Naveen D. & Naveen, Lalitha, 2006. "Managerial incentives and risk-taking," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 79(2), pages 431-468, February.
    39. Rangarajan K. Sundaram & David L. Yermack, 2007. "Pay Me Later: Inside Debt and Its Role in Managerial Compensation," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 62(4), pages 1551-1588, 08.
    40. Morck, Randall & Shleifer, Andrei & Vishny, Robert W., 1988. "Management ownership and market valuation : An empirical analysis," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 20(1-2), pages 293-315, January.
    41. Black, Fischer & Scholes, Myron S, 1973. "The Pricing of Options and Corporate Liabilities," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 81(3), pages 637-654, May-June.
    42. Hemmer, Thomas & Kim, Oliver & Verrecchia, Robert E., 1999. "Introducing convexity into optimal compensation contracts," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 28(3), pages 307-327, December.
    43. Mathias Dewatripont & Jean Tirole, 1994. "A Theory of Debt and Equity: Diversity of Securities and Manager-Shareholder Congruence," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 109(4), pages 1027-1054.
    44. May, Don O, 1995. " Do Managerial Motives Influence Firm Risk Reduction Strategies?," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 50(4), pages 1291-1308, September.
    45. Tufano, Peter, 1996. " Who Manages Risk? An Empirical Examination of Risk Management Practices in the Gold Mining Industry," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 51(4), pages 1097-1137, September.
    46. Hirshleifer, David & Suh, Yoon, 1992. "Risk, managerial effort, and project choice," Journal of Financial Intermediation, Elsevier, vol. 2(3), pages 308-345, September.
    47. 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.
    48. Opler, Tim C & Titman, Sheridan, 1994. " Financial Distress and Corporate Performance," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 49(3), pages 1015-1040, July.
    49. Denis, David J., 1994. "Investment Opportunities and the Market Reaction to Equity Offerings," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 29(02), pages 159-177, June.
    50. Smith, Clifford W. & Stulz, René M., 1985. "The Determinants of Firms' Hedging Policies," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 20(04), pages 391-405, December.
    51. Stephen H. Archer & LeRoy G. Faerber, 1966. "Firm Size And The Cost Of Externally Secured Equity Capital," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 21(1), pages 69-83, 03.
    52. Bebchuk, Lucian Arye & Jolls, Christine, 1999. "Managerial Value Diversion and Shareholder Wealth," Journal of Law, Economics and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 15(2), pages 487-502, July.
    53. Bhagat, Sanjai & Welch, Ivo, 1995. "Corporate research & development investments international comparisons," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 19(2-3), pages 443-470, April.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

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

    as
    in new window


    Cited by:
    This item has more than 25 citations. To prevent cluttering this page, these citations are listed on a separate page.

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

    Access and download statistics

    When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:jfinec:v:103:y:2012:i:3:p:588-610. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

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

    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.

    This information is provided to you by IDEAS at the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis using RePEc data.