My monograph Rich-Hunt is subtitled “The Backdated Options Frenzy and the Ordeal of Greg Reyes.” But if you have not read the monograph, and if you missed the whole frenzy of 2005–2011, you may well wonder: What is a backdated option? Indeed, you may not even be quite sure about what an option is and how it works. So, let me start there.

An option is a type of security that gives a person the right to buy a share of a company’s stock at a specified price. For example, an option might give you the right to buy a share of Google at $5. That would be a very valuable option. Or an option might give you the right to buy a share of Google at $5,000. That would not be so valuable.

Typically, when a company gives options to its employees as a form of compensation, the employees are allowed to buy shares in the company (which is called “exercising the options”), and the price at which they may buy the stock is called the option’s “exercise price,” or “strike price.” Typically, however, they can exercise their options only after a defined span of time (called “the vesting period”) and before a certain date (called “the expiration date”).

So, the value of such option grants rests entirely on the possibility that the stock will be selling above the strike price during the period of time that the employee is permitted to use the option to buy a share. If the stock price is higher than the exercise price, the employee can reap a profit by purchasing a share of stock at the exercise price and then immediately selling that share on the stock market. Of course, if the stock price does not rise above the strike price between the time that the options vest and the time that they expire, then the options are forever worthless.

…continue reading: Rich-Hunt: The Speech

In our forthcoming Journal of Financial Economics paper, Stock Options and Managerial Incentives for Risk Taking, we exploit the change in the accounting treatment of stock-based compensation under FAS 123R, which was issued by the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) and took effect in December 2005, to provide new evidence on the role that convexity in compensation contracts plays in providing incentives for risk taking by managers.  An additional rationale that is often stated for the dramatic rise in option-based compensation over time revolves around how stock options were treated for accounting purposes. Prior to the implementation of FAS 123R, firms were allowed to expense stock options at their intrinsic value. Because nearly all firms granted stock options at-the-money, no expenses for option-based compensation were generally reported on the income statement.

Hall and Murphy (2003) argue that, due to their favorable accounting treatment and the fact that there is no cash outlay at the time of the grant, firms act as though the perceived cost of options is lower than their true economic cost. If firms make decisions based on the perceived costs instead of the economic costs, they grant more options than they would otherwise, and options with their favorable accounting treatment are preferred to possibly better incentive plans with less favorable accounting treatment. Consistent with this view, Carter, Lynch, and Tuna (2007) provide evidence that the accounting treatment of stock options affected their use, showing that a comprehensive proxy for financial reporting concerns was positively related to the use of stock options prior to FAS 123R. The implementation of FAS 123R eliminated the ability to expense options at their intrinsic value and instead required firms to begin expensing stock-based compensation at its fair value, effectively eliminating any accounting advantages associated with stock options.

…continue reading: Stock Options and Managerial Incentives for Risk Taking

In our paper, Executive Stock Options, Differential Risk-Taking Incentives, and Firm Value, forthcoming in the Journal of Financial Economics, we examine how executive stock options (ESOs) give chief executive officers (CEOs) differential incentives to alter their firms’ systematic and idiosyncratic risk. Since ESOs give CEOs incentives to alter their firms’ risk profile through both their sensitivity to stock return volatility, or vega, and their sensitivity to stock price, or delta, we examine both effects.

Theory suggests that vega gives risk-averse managers more of an incentive to increase total risk by increasing systematic rather than idiosyncratic risk, since, for a given level of vega, an increase in systematic risk always results in a greater increase in a CEO’s subjective value of his or her stock-option portfolio than does an equivalent increase in idiosyncratic risk. This differential risk-taking incentive manifests because a CEO who can trade the market portfolio can hedge any unwanted increase in the firm’s systematic risk. Consistent with this prediction, we provide evidence of a strong positive relationship between vega and the level of both total and systematic risk. However, we do not find vega and idiosyncratic risk to be significantly related.

…continue reading: Executive Stock Options, Differential Risk-Taking Incentives, and Firm Value

U.S. and international accounting standards mandate recognition and/or disclosure of fair value information for an increasing number of items. Fair value estimates require judgment, introducing the possibility of biases in measurements, measurers, and/or models. In addition, unanticipated changes in market risk result in realized values differing from fair value estimates. Accompanying the shift to fair value accounting is the emergence of voluntary disclosures in audited financial statement footnotes that alert investors to management’s concerns about the reliability of mandated fair value information. We refer to such disclosures as reliability disavowals (hereafter, disavowals). In our paper, Are voluntary disclosures that disavow the reliability of mandated fair value information informative or opportunistic? forthcoming in the Journal of Accounting and Economics as published by Elsevier, we examine whether disavowals are informative; that is whether they are a truthful revelation by management that their fair value estimates are unreliable. We also consider that managerial opportunism may contribute to—or even solely motivate—the decision to disavow.

…continue reading: Voluntary Disclosures That Disavow the Reliability of Mandated Fair Value Information

In our paper, Should Size Matter When Regulating Firms? Implications from Backdating of Executive Options [15 N.Y.U. J. Legis. & Pub. Pol'y (forthcoming Winter 2011)], we present a data point relevant to significant issues of policy concerning areas of law where small firms have either been granted exemption from regulations or not investigated for violations of laws that, on their face, apply to them. Whether small firms should be exempted is an empirical question the answer to which depends on the likelihood of such firms violating regulations.

There are numerous instances in the law where small firms have been granted exemptions from regulatory restrictions. The major justification offered by the proponents for this exemption of small firms is the claim that regulation has a disproportionate effect on these companies. For example, in the area of securities law, regulation of small firms has drawn criticism throughout the years. It has been lamented that “the [Securities Exchange Commission] SEC [has] never . . . understood small businesses, their capital needs, their importance to our economy, and the special circumstance they face…” Similarly, since its enactment in 2002, the Sarbanes-Oxley legislation (SOX) has been highly criticized for the level of expense it has imposed upon firms’ efforts to comply with the legislation. In order to decide if regulation should be lenient towards small firms, we need to first understand what types of firms are likely to be engaged in illicit activity. If we knew that small firms are also likely to violate laws, as a matter of public policy, should we continue to exempt firms from regulatory scrutiny solely due to size? That is, should size matter in regulatory policy decisions? Furthermore, should size be a factor when prosecutors target firms for investigation?

…continue reading: Should Size Matter When Regulating Firms?

In our paper, Employee Stock Ownership Plans: Employee Compensation and Firm Value, which was recently made publicly available on SSRN, we investigate whether adopting a broad-based employee stock ownership plan enhances productivity by improving team incentives and co-monitoring. That is, does employee capitalism work? If so, how are gains divided between shareholders and employees?

We find that small ESOPs increase productivity. Unlike Jones and Kato (1995) on Japanese ESOPs, our evidence of productivity gains is based on the effects on two main beneficiaries of such gains: employees and shareholders. Because our evidence indicates both stakeholders gain from adopting small ESOPs, we infer employee share ownership increases the size of the economic pie by improving worker productivity.

This causal interpretation is substantiated by our evidence on how the division of productivity gains is related to employee mobility within an establishment’s industry and location of work place. We find that when labor mobility increases, increasing workers’ bargaining power vis-à-vis shareholders’, employees’ share of gains increases and stockholders’ share decreases.

…continue reading: Employee Stock Ownership Plans

In our paper, Proxy Advisory Firms and Stock Option Exchanges: The Case of Institutional Shareholder Services, which was recently made publicly available on SSRN, we examine the role of proxy advisors in the specific context of stock option exchanges, where firms replace underwater stock options with new awards of options, restricted stock and/or cash. We restrict our investigation to this specific transaction because it is a relatively simple, one-time transaction where the set of design choices are well defined and can be collected from SEC filings. In addition, the precise criteria used by Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS) in making the voting recommendation are known, and we can observe the degree to which an option exchange follows or deviates from their criteria. Finally, there is considerable variation across the firms in the structure of their exchange programs and the influence of ISS on proxy voting outcomes. This enables us to examine the performance implications of plan design choices and the role of ISS in these transactions.

…continue reading: Proxy Advisory Firms and Stock Option Exchanges

In our forthcoming Journal of Finance paper, Overconfidence and Early-life Experiences: The Effect of Managerial Traits on Corporate Financial Policies, we provide evidence that managers’ beliefs and early-life experiences significantly affect financial policies, above and beyond traditional market-, industry-, and firm-level determinants of capital structure. We begin by using personal portfolio choices of CEOs to measure their beliefs about the future performance of their own companies. We focus on CEOs who persistently exercise their executive stock options late relative to a rational diversification benchmark. We consider several interpretations of such behavior — including positive inside information — and show that it is most consistent with CEO overconfidence. We also verify our measure of revealed beliefs by confirming that such CEOs are disproportionately characterized by the business press as “confident” or “optimistic,” rather than “reliable,” “cautious,” “practical,” “conservative,” “frugal,” or “steady.”

…continue reading: The Effect of Managerial Traits on Corporate Financial Policies

In the paper, Excess-Pay Clawbacks, which was recently made publicly available on SSRN, Nitzan Shilon and I identify substantial deficiencies in the clawback arrangements of public companies. We also explain why the Dodd-Frank Act’s clawback requirement is likely to improve these arrangements, but does not go far enough.

The paper begins by highlighting the problem of “excess pay” – excessively high payouts to executives arising from errors in earnings and other compensation-related metrics. Such excess pay, we explain, can impose substantial costs on shareholders even if there is no manipulation or other misconduct. Unfortunately, directors frequently use their discretion to let current and departed executives keep excess pay. Thus, an optimal clawback policy would require directors to recover excess pay from either current or departed executives.

…continue reading: Excess-Pay Clawbacks

In our paper, The Market Value of Corporate Votes: Theory and Evidence from Option Prices, which was recently made publicly available on SSRN, we propose a new method to measure the market value of the right to vote. We quantify the market value of the right to vote as the difference in the prices of the stock and the corresponding synthetic stock. The synthetic (non-voting) stock is constructed using option prices, particularly facilitating the put-call parity relationship. The main insight is that the owners of common stocks have both cash flow rights and voting rights, whereas holders of synthetic stocks have the cash flow rights but not the voting rights. Hence, the difference in the price of the stock and the synthetic stock quantifies the market value of the vote during the expected life of the synthetic stock.

…continue reading: The Market Value of Corporate Votes