A large body of prior literature examines the relation between managerial equity incentives and financial misreporting but reports mixed results. This literature argues that a manager whose wealth is more sensitive to changes in stock price has a greater incentive to misreport. However, if managers are risk-averse and misreporting increases both equity values and equity risk, managers face a risk/return tradeoff when making a misreporting decision. In this case, the sensitivity of the manager’s wealth to changes in stock price, or portfolio delta, will have two countervailing incentive effects: a positive “reward effect” and a negative “risk effect.” In contrast, the sensitivity of the manager’s equity portfolio to changes in risk, or portfolio vega, will have an unambiguously positive incentive effect. Accordingly, when managers are risk-averse, it is important to jointly consider both portfolio delta and portfolio vega when assessing the relation between equity incentives and misreporting.

In our paper, The Relation Between Equity Incentives and Misreporting: The Role of Risk-Taking Incentives, forthcoming in the Journal of Financial Economics, we show that jointly considering both portfolio delta and portfolio vega substantially alters inferences reported in the literature. Specifically, we find inferences in studies reporting either a positive relation or no relation between portfolio delta and misreporting are not robust to controlling for vega.

…continue reading: The Relation between Equity Incentives and Misreporting

In my paper Inside Debt and Mergers and Acquisitions, forthcoming in the Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, I examine the link between CEO inside debt holdings and corporate risk-taking in M&A activities and its implications for bondholder, shareholder, and firm value. M&As are among the largest and most readily observable forms of corporate investment, which tend to intensify the inherent conflict of interests among shareholders, bondholders, and managers. Manager’s pension benefits and deferred compensation are debt-like compensation since they represent fixed obligations by the company to make future payments to corporate insiders/managers (hence, these are usually referred to as “inside debt”). Inside debt is expected to align manager interests with those of external debtholders and alleviate managers’ risk-taking incentive since inside debt is typically unsecured and unfunded, and if the firms go bankrupt, managers have equal claims as those of other unsecured creditors. Therefore, M&As provide a unique ground for testing the potential effects of debt-like compensation on corporate investment and financing strategies and the implications of the stakeholders’ interests.

…continue reading: Inside Debt and Mergers and Acquisitions

What motivates minority acquisitions? We study the trade-off between minority acquisitions, involving less than 50% of the target, and majority acquisitions in the forthcoming Review of Financial Studies paper, “What Motivates Minority Acquisitions? The Trade-Offs between a Partial Equity Stake and Complete Integration.” Minority acquisitions have been shown to facilitate cooperation between two independent firms. For example, Allen and Phillips (2000) and Fee, Hadlock, and Thomas (2006) show that a minority acquisition can align the incentives of the acquirer with those of the target. However, similar benefits can also be achieved with a majority acquisition, suggesting that minority stakes are also motivated as a means to avoid certain costs associated with majority control.

Using a sample of 2,166 deals, we identify several key predictors in the choice between a minority or majority acquisition. The key insight provided in this paper is the importance of costs associated with the dilution to target managerial incentives following a majority acquisition in selecting the mode of acquisition. Evidence that firms are willing to forgo benefits to control to preserve target incentives speaks to the value of these incentives.

…continue reading: What Motivates Minority Acquisitions?

The State Board of Administration (SBA) sponsored an executive compensation research study by Farient Advisors LLC, covering 1,800 companies, 24 Industry groups, and fourteen years of data (from 1998-2011). The research project identifies the primary metrics used in executive compensation plans, overall and by industry, company size, and valuation premiums, and then tests these metrics to determine whether the metrics being used have the highest impact on total stock returns.

The study provides the most definitive answer to date on a critical question—are companies choosing their long-term incentive metrics wisely for the most sustainable benefit to shareowners?

…continue reading: Performance Metrics and Their Link to Value

Triggered by the recent financial crisis, the regulation of banks has gained new traction among academics, regulators, and politicians. One of the key challenges in effective regulation is time inconsistency of regulation. While a regulator would like to commit not to bail out banks in order to set the right ex-ante incentives, this threat is generally not credible since the government does not follow through in the event of a crisis. Banks therefore have an incentive to expose themselves to risk that is partially insured by the government.

To mitigate this problem, regulators attempt to reduce the likelihood of banking crises by regulating both banks’ asset side and liability side. While there has been a recent push to focus on the liability side by mandating higher equity capital requirements, the very nature of a deposit-taking institution implies that leverage is an integral part of the business model of banks, unlike for other firms. In this paper, we therefore focus on the regulation of banks’ asset holdings. The starting point of our paper is the natural assumption that a regulator cannot directly observe the riskiness of assets, but needs to rely on an external (private) assessment of risk. Since the introduction of the Basel I framework, credit ratings have played an important role in bank regulation as “objective” measures of credit risk. This role has been confirmed in the Basel III (2011) guidelines, which still rely on credit ratings as measures of creditworthiness.

…continue reading: Bank Regulation with Private-Party Risk Assessments

In recent years, large severance payouts to executives who have been fired from poorly performing firms have attracted a great deal of attention in the popular press. There is a considerable degree of popular outrage on what seem to be egregious ex post payments that are unrelated to the executive’s performance during his tenure at the firm. However, though severance agreements are potentially important elements of executives’ compensation contracts, there is little empirical evidence on the incidence and terms of ex ante severance agreements negotiated by executives, let alone on how these contracts fit into executives’ overall incentive compensation schemes.

In our paper, How Do Ex-Ante Severance Pay Contracts Fit into Optimal Executive Incentive Schemes?, forthcoming in the Journal of Accounting Research, we analyze a unique hand-collected sample of 3,688 severance contracts in place at 808 firms in 2004. Based on the full list of S&P1500 firms, this sample is the most comprehensive of any work in this area, including firms of all sizes, ages, and industries, and executives of a wide range of ranks including the Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Chief Financial Officer (CFO), Chief Operating Officer (COO), and other executives. Around 68% of the firms list explicit severance contract terms with their executives. Most contracts list up to three sets of benefits: explicit cash payments as multiples of salary and bonus (most common benefit); medical and life insurance benefits, and benefits covering the payment of legal fees, outplacement, and other perks.

…continue reading: Ex-Ante Severance Pay Contracts and Optimal Executive Incentive Schemes

“Then you should say what you mean,” the March Hare went on.

“I do,” Alice hastily replied; “at least—at least I mean what I say—that’s the same thing, you know.”

“Not the same thing a bit!” said the Hatter. “You might just as well say that ‘I see what I eat’ is the same thing as ‘I eat what I see’!”

Alice in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll (1865)

The Preamble to SEC Disclosure Regulations (2006) [1] states: “We believe that plain English principles should apply to the disclosure requirements that we are adopting, so disclosure provided in response to those requirements is easier to read and understand. Clearer, more concise presentation of executive and director compensation…can facilitate more informed investing and voting decisions in the face of complex information about these important areas.”

To which the Mad Hatter might have responded: “You can assume plain English conveys clear thinking, but what happens if plain English is not fed by clear thinking?”

…continue reading: Assigning Value to Long-Term Incentive Pay

In the paper, R&D and the Incentives from Merger and Acquisition Activity, forthcoming in the Review of Financial Services, my co-author (Alexei Zhdanov of the University of Lausanne and the Swiss Finance Institute) and I examine how the incentives to innovate differ between large and small firms and whether the M&A market hinders or promotes innovative activity. Previous literature has documented that R&D and innovation decreases post-acquisition and has attributed this effect to large firms stifling innovative activity. Using recent data on pre-merger R&D activity, we show that this view is flawed. Rather than large firms stifling R&D by small firms, we show theoretically and empirically how mergers can stimulate R&D activity of small firms. Thus, ex ante R&D rises and then falls naturally after acquisition as the pre-merger stimulus effect wears off.

…continue reading: R&D and the Incentives from Merger and Acquisition Activity

Introduction

In 2011, with significant input from others at the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, I proposed that the U.S. financial system be restructured by business lines with accompanying money market reforms. Since then, I often have been asked why I think there is any stomach for a modern version of Glass-Steagall or any other major financial reform when Dodd-Frank has not yet been fully implemented.

I recognize that enactment of such a proposal [1] is no simple task, but doing so will reduce the subsidy for too-big-to-fail firms and better align their economic incentives and rewards. Importantly, a return to a more accountable financial system is an essential step if we expect to rebuild public trust in our financial institutions and in the government that regulates them. That trust can be reestablished and accountability can be put back into the system so that the banking industry can win without the rest of us losing.

It is well understood that our country faces many challenges that are beyond the financial system. Post financial crisis, the United States faces an expanding fiscal challenge that will affect future discussions on tax structure and spending priorities. We cannot hope to find meaningful solutions or common ground to work from regarding these challenges if the public fails to trust its financial and governmental institutions. Who will agree to make sacrifices for the good of the country if they judge that reforms will be poorly or unfairly applied? How can we possibly convince Americans that the fiscal steps will be equitable when we bailed out the largest banks and yet they remain — larger, more powerful, and insulated from the market’s discipline?

…continue reading: Financial Stability Through Properly Aligned Incentives

In the paper, Managing Agency Problems in Early Shareholder Capitalism: An Exploration of Liverpool Shipping in the 18th Century, which was recently made publicly available on SSRN, we use historical data on Liverpool transatlantic shipping to examine the effect of equity ownership on top manager behavior. We found that the pattern of equity ownership by captains in the vessels that they piloted was not random. Rather, vessels that were at particular risk of attack by enemy privateers were significantly more likely to have captains who were also part-owners. This is consistent with an agency view of equity ownership. Owners preferred that captains resist privateers fiercely, but it was difficult to construct contractual incentives to elicit such behavior. Partial ownership of the vessel by the captain was one mechanism by which to align captains’ and owners’ incentives regarding the privateer threat, and consequently to elicit desired behavior from captains.

We found that equity ownership was associated with a lower likelihood that a vessel would be captured by privateers. Difference of means tests indicated a statistically significant reduction. Multivariate estimation indicated a stable, negative effect of captain-ownership on the likelihood of being captured by privateers, although the statistical significance of this relation-ship varied across models. Overall, the use of equity ownership by Liverpool vessel owners, and the effect of equity ownership on vessel captains’ behavior, appears to be largely consistent with agency theory’s predictions about the modern use and effect of equity on shareholder and top management behavior.

…continue reading: Managing Agency Problems in Early Shareholder Capitalism