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Monthly Income Preferred Stock (MIPS), Quarterly Income Preferred Stock (QUIPS), and Trust Originated Preferred Stock (TOPrS) all carry the title of preferred stock. As in the case of other forms of preferred stock, investors cannot force the issuer into bankruptcy if it fails to make a scheduled dividend payment. Unlike conventional preferred stock, however, the dividend payments on these new securities are deductible by the issuer for tax purposes. Thus MIPS, QUIPS and TOPrS appear to provide issuers with in some respects the ideal security–one that offers the tax advantages of debt without the potential for financial distress and its associated costs. And since the first issue of this kind of security in 1993, nearly 300 corporate issuers have raised a total of close to $30 billion with this novel hybrid security. But if these securities appear new, there is another security–namely, income bonds–that has offered these same advantages for at least the past 100 years. After discussing MIPS, QUIPS, and TOPrS in some detail, and the stock market's reaction issuing companies, the article explores the question: Why are tax-deductible preferreds so popular today when income bonds have been shunned for the past 60 years?

We exploit the randomized assignment of lottery prizes in a large administrative Swedish data set to estimate the causal effect of wealth on stock market participation. A $150,000 windfall gain increases the stock market participation probability by 12 percentage points among prelottery nonparticipants but has no discernible effect on prelottery stock owners. A structural life cycle model significantly overpredicts entry rates even for very high entry costs (up to $31,000). Additional analyses implicate pessimistic beliefs regarding equity returns as a major source of this overprediction and suggest that both recent and early-life return realizations affect beliefs.

The question of whether and to what extent option trading impacts underlying stock prices has been a focus of intense interest since options began exchange-based trading in 1973. Despite considerable effort, no convincing evidence for a pervasive impact has been produced. A recent strand of theoretical literature predicts that rebalancing by traders who hedge their option positions increases (decreases) underlying stock return volatility when these traders have net written (purchased) option positions. This paper tests this prediction and finds a statistically and economically significant negative relationship between stock return volatility and net purchased option positions of investors who are likely to hedge. Hence, we provide the first evidence for a substantial and pervasive influence of option trading on stock prices.

We analyze how rank-and-file employee compensation contracts of target firms affect the negotiations of merger terms and merger outcomes. Using unique data from merger agreements, we document that in 80.6% of all deals at least some of the target’s employee stock options are canceled by the acquirer. Employees lose approximately half of their option value in the average M&A deal. By exploiting the exogenous variation in option grants, we find that the offer price premium is larger when the target firm has many employee options. Further, the bidders that cancel stock options earn on average 1.5% higher announcement return. We find no evidence of strategic targeting of firms with options. Our results are consistent with the bidders trading off the costs of compensation liabilities against the resistance of employees.

This study generates new empirical evidence on the issue of underreporting of executive stock options. It is the first to investigate this issue under the mandatory expense setting created by International Financial Reporting Standard (IFRS) 2. I use a hand-collected data sample from Germany, where stock options have a long history of performance vesting, which allows me to analyze the added potential to manipulate values through the more complex valuation methods found in Germany. I find that many firms fail to disclose all required parameters; this failure is linked to incentives to hide remuneration and lack of experience in preparing IFRS reports. For reporting firms, I show that underreporting exists in Germany despite a new enforcement framework, and that it is driven by incentives to hide higher values. This holds implications for both investors who may want to institute stricter supervision as well as enforcement agencies, who should pay more attention to reporting of option-based compensation.

Unit 13 covers: • Compensating Owners and Execs in Unincorporated Entities • Compensating Owners and Execs in Corporations • Incentive Stock Options • Non-qualified Stock Options • Stock Appreciation Rights

This study examine earnings management behavior related to compensation in the form of stock options during implementation of the grant program (vesting period). The study also examine and identify the differences in behavior during the execution of stock options. Companies as a sample in this study is a company listed in the Indonesia Stock Exchange, which has adopted the Executive Stock Option Plan and restricted to the companies that publish financial statements as of December 31 for the year 2007 to 2009. Final sample of this research into as many as 21 sample companies and the number of observations are 63 observational studies. The result of testing H1 shows that the more stock options offered to employees, the managers more motivated to manage earnings down prior to offering stock options. The results are consistent with previous studies of the behavior of managers who expect the share price decline before the date of grant, so the manager to pay compensation for stock options with a relatively cheap price. The results of testing H2a and H2b show that the more stock options offered to employees, the managers more motivated to manage earnings upward after offering stock options. Results show that an early stage implementation of executive stock option plans, executives trend to behave increasing income until vesting period final.

This study investigates whether a firm's past or future performance is related with the adoption of restricted stock grants. In addition, it also explores the relation between conditions of adopting restricted stock grants and firms' future performance. Empirical results show that there is no significant relationship between firms' past performance and the adoption of restricted stock grants. By contrast, improved future performance is found for companies adopting this compensation policy. Further, the incentive effect of restricted stock grants could be improved by extending the vesting service period, increasing the expenses amount of restricted stock grants, and decreasing the reduction in EPS. This article contributes to the serious lack of restricted stock grants literature in Taiwan. Also, it may offer some implications to companies considering the compensation scheme of restricted stock grants.

This paper investigates whether employee stock option proceeds, both executive and non-executive are employed by firms to finance investment by exploiting a quasi-natural experiment which mandated option expensing, SFAS 123R. We find that despite a fall in both executive and non-executive option grants and proceeds, investment has increased post-SFAS 123R. The investment's sensitivity to option proceeds remains constant or even decreases for non-executive option proceeds post-SFAS 123R implying that option proceeds are not an integral source of finance. Our results are not driven by the recent financial crisis as well as the changes in corporate governance and financial constraints over the sample period.

Europe continues to lag behind the USA in venture capital (VC) activity and in the creation of successful startups, and has recently been surpassed by China. This is despite the fact that many European countries have deep financial markets, strong legal institutions, and high R&D spending. We point to the tax treatment of employee stock options as an explanation for the stronger growth of the US VC sector. As a response to high uncertainty and transaction costs, VC financiers have developed a model in which founders and key recruitments are compensated with stock options under complex contracts. Low tax rates on employee stock options further raise the relative returns of working and investing in innovative entrepreneurial firms, and shift financial capital and talent to that sector. We measure the effective tax on stock options in VC-backed entrepreneurial firms in a number of developed economies. Countries with lower stock option taxation have higher VC activity and more high-growth expectation entrepreneurial activity. Based on these associations and the theoretical and empirical literature, we argue that more lenient taxation of gains on employee stock options can be a strategy for European countries to catch up in entrepreneurial finance. This tax policy would narrowly target entrepreneurial startups without requiring broad tax cuts. The favorable tax treatment of stock options allows the state to promote firms that rely on entrepreneurial finance and make use of these types of contracts without lowering taxes for other sectors of the economy.

In this paper we compute long-term stock return expectations (across the business cycle) for individual firms using information backed out from the credit derivatives market. Our methodology builds on previous theoretical results in the literature on stock return expectations and, empirically, we demonstrate a close relationship between credit-implied stock return expectations and future realized stock returns. We also find stock portfolios selected based on credit-implied stock return forecasts to beat equally- and value-weighted portfolios of the same stocks out-of-sample. Contrary to many other studies, our expectations/predictions are made at the individual stock level rather than at the portfolio level, and no parameter estimations using historical stock price- or credit spread observations are needed. (Less)

This paper extends a standard principal-agent model of CEO compensation by modeling progressive learning about firm value by shareholders. The dynamics of the stock price process are affected by the accumulation of exogenous shocks to firm value, and by progressive learning of the firm's technology by shareholders. Whereas exogenous shocks increase the divergence between the stock price and ex-ante firm value, learning decreases it. The optimal contract is contingent on several points in the stock price process to enable the manager to benefit from temporal diversification, and compensation is more long-term when there is more learning. The model thus provides a justification for the multiplicity of vesting periods associated with equity grants, and it generates new predictions on the duration of CEO compensation.

Using the China Household Finance Survey data in 2011, the estimation results of structural equation modeling demonstrate that the respondents with higher time preference rate have a significant higher probability of investing in stocks, which implies that the short-term households will prefer stock investment. The social insurance programs and insurance policies held by the family will have a significantly direct positive effect in promoting stock investment and also a significantly direct positive effect on the respondent’s time preference, which could further indirectly increase the family’s stock investment. These results show that the safety-net built by the Chinese government, including the social security and commercial insurance, is very likely to attract more short-term investors into the stock market. These empirical results provide new evidences to explain the extreme volatility of Chinese stock market and also testify the policy effect of building an environment for people to possess property income in China.

Valuation heuristics are widely used in industry practice, policy documents, and several academic studies to value traditional time vesting option plans. This paper analyzes to what extent such heuristics also qualify for valuing performance vesting plans. To this end, we examine performance conditions tied to the underlying stock, the stock’s performance relative to a stock index and an earnings measure and derive optimal option exercises in a simulation framework. We investigate the valuation differences between the optimal exercise model, the commonly used adjusted maturity approximation, and the approach proposed by Hull and White (2004). For optimal exercise behavior, the changes in option costs due to the performance conditions we investigate are generally low. Only when the options represent a large fraction of the employee’s wealth do the performance conditions prevent value-diminishing early exercises and thus increase the option cost to the firm. The differences between the optimal and approximated option values are overall smaller with the performance conditions than without them. This can be mainly attributed to the fact that the performance conditions restrict the possible option exercise states and thus limit the effect of the misspecified true exercise boundary within the approximations.

Most of previous studies on stock price informativeness tend to focus on the context of mature stock markets while this issue is more acute in emerging equity markets where regulatory and institutional structure are weak. This paper examines the relationship between foreign ownership and stock price informativeness in Vietnam stock market. We utilize a data set covering firm attributes of non-financial firms listed on the Ho Chi Minh City stock exchange over the period 2007–2015. Employing different estimation techniques for panel data, the empirical results indicate that foreign investors improve stock price informativeness in Vietnam stock market. The finding from this paper confirms the important role of foreign investors in emerging equity markets.

Studies on the underlying reasons for stock splits can be broadly categorized into two groups: those argue that firms use stock splits to signal favorable private information to the market and those argue that stock splits are used to improve liquidity. We shed light on this issue by examining the change in institutional holdings around stock splits and find that institutional investors, especially short-term investors, increase their holding of the splitting firm's stock. The change in short-term institutional ownership is positively related to the improvement in firm's information environment, especially for less liquid stocks and stocks that are not widely held by institutional investors. Our evidence supports the liquidity hypothesis instead of the signaling hypothesis of stock splits.

Using a broad sample of earnings announcements, we show that the initial stock market's response substantially increases and the post†earnings announcement drift becomes much weaker in the presence of more active pre†earnings option trading. We find that the strongest initial stock market's response originates from those announcements with higher pre†earnings option trading, fewer competing announcements, and made on non†Fridays. Our interpretation is that the heightened investor attention, as captured by higher pre†earnings option trading, fewer competing announcements, and non†Friday announcements, accelerates the stock market's response and mitigates the stock market under†reaction.

Stock options have been advocated to encourage managers to make long-run investments like R&D and capital expenditures (CAPX) that entail upfront costs with the potential to generate favorable long-term returns. However, the effect of options on managerial decisions depends on managerial beliefs about how the stock market reacts to firm behavior. If, consistent with empirical evidence, managers believe that stock prices increase in the short term from increased R&D, but not CAPX, then stock option exercisability—which dictates when managers can receive option payouts—should influence resource allocation. We also consider the effect of changes in the value of options over time. Results from a study of more than 6,500 observations from about 1,000 manufacturing firms over 18 years show that unexercisable stock options positively influence CAPX but not R&D, while exercisable stock options positively influence R&D but not CAPX. Both patterns are consistent with behavior that increases managerial payoffs but not necessarily firm performance. In addition, we find an expected negative association between underwater options and CAPX but no evidence of a corresponding positive relation with R&D. Finally, we find partial evidence of a house money effect that makes allocations to CAPX and R&D sensitive to recent changes in option values.

Directors commonly “punish” CEOs for overly risky behavior by rebalancing their compensation to include more restricted stock and fewer stock options. This paper extends the behavioral-agency model to describe how CEOs will manage their holdings of stock and stock options in response to this form of compensation rebalancing. In doing so, it finds that CEOs respond by selling existing stock holdings and accumulating option holdings. This behavior achieves the opposite incentive structure that such rebalancing intends to create, raising questions about the effectiveness of compensation rebalancing in reducing risky decision making.

While a classic result by Merton (1973,Bell J. Econ. Manage. Sci., 141–183) is that one should never exercise an American call option just before expiration if the underlying stock pays no dividends, the conclusion of a very recent empirical study conducted by Jensen and Pedersen (2016,J. Financ. Econ.121(2), 278–299) suggests that one should ‘never say never’. This paper complements Jensen and Pedersen's empirical study by presenting a theoretical study on how to price American call options under a hard-to-borrow stock model proposed by Avellaneda and Lipkin (2009,Risk22(6), 92–97). Our study confirms that it is the lending fee that results in the early exercise of American call options and we shall also demonstrate to what extent lending fees have affected the early exercise decision.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to contrast three investment choices within the reach of individual investors: naive portfolios of Brazilian stocks; actively managed stock funds; and the Ibovespa index, which represents passive management as well as to offer insights on the performance of professional asset managers in this large emerging market. Design/methodology/approach Equally weighted portfolios contained between 5 and 30 stocks to keep transaction costs low. Stock selection used the Ibovespa constituents and considered value (dividend yield (DY) and price-to-book ratio), momentum (past returns), and liquidity, as well as the Sharpe ratio (SR) over the 2003-2012 period, rebalancing three times a year. Findings Cumulative returns of naive portfolios are large. They frequently outperform the index for all values of n. They also outperform stock funds, particularly when the invested amount exceeds US$25,000, due to transaction costs. Yet, expected out-of-sample SRs corrected for errors in estimates are very low, suggesting that one should not count on this historical performance in the future. Naive portfolios may simply be more exposed to additional value, size, and momentum risks. Results are sensitive to time period selection. Practical implications Naive portfolios may be attractive to individual investors in Brazil relative to stock funds, which seem to strive to keep volatility low and may be better when the investment amount is low. There may be merit for value or momentum stock selection strategies when forming small equally weighted portfolios. Originality/value The paper contrasts realistic stock investing alternatives for individuals, it provides a view of stock fund performance in Brazil, and offers practical implications that may be pertinent in other emerging stock markets.

This paper investigates the information content of options trading prior to dividend change announcements. I find a positive (negative) relation between pre-announcement abnormal implied volatility (IV) spread (abnormal IV skew) and cumulative abnormal stock returns around dividend change announcements. The predictive power of informed options trading is stronger for announcements of dividend reduction and when the options market is more liquid relative to the stock market, and weaker when information has already been incorporated in the stock market. The predictability of informed option trading is robust to a placebo test and alternative measures of informed options trading. Overall results suggest that informed option trading predicts dividend change announcement returns. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved

We develop a dynamic asset pricing model with two institutional investors who have benchmark incentives and who disagree about the underlying economy. We derive semi-closed form expressions for all equilibrium quantities. We find that the benchmark stock price increases and the non-benchmark stock price decreases with the benchmark incentives. Furthermore, each stock price decreases with its own disagreement and increases with the other stock disagreement. We also show that there is a positive relationship between the co-movement of the stocks and the benchmark incentives, but that this co-movement is negative with the disagreements, owing to the endogenous risk-sharing mechanisms. Moreover, we find that, when one stock disagreement increases, the optimistic institutional investor always takes positions on this stock by shorting the other stock and the bond in order to hedge against the risk of market changes, in line with the pessimistic investor's beliefs.

In this paper, we examine managerial gaming of different types of equity grants, both at the initial award of the equity grants (front-end gaming) and the unwinding of the equity holdings in the future (back-end gaming). We find that the potential gains from stock price manipulation vary substantially across different types of equity grants. While traditional stock option grants are less vulnerable to front-end gaming, they are more vulnerable to back-end gaming than other types of equity grants (e.g., restricted stock grants). To prevent or discourage managerial gaming, firms should preset all terms of the equity grant in advance and link its future payoff to average stock prices (e.g., by granting Asian stock options).

We investigate a hitherto unexplored aspect of the hot money phenomenon: the effect of hot money at the individual stock level. In the South Korean stock market, foreign capital flow right before the global financial crisis can be characterized as hot money. A larger increase in foreign investors’ ownership of a particular stock in the pre-crisis period resulted in a bigger decline in their ownership of the stock, a sharper drop in the stock's price, and higher volatility of the stock during the crisis. Our findings supplement the existing evidence for the destabilizing effect of certain international capital flows.

In this paper, we examine the role of stock liquidity as a governance mechanism to discipline managers for withholding bad news (stock price crash-risk). This topic is useful to emerging markets because the dominance of controlling owners limits the monitoring of internal governance. Stock liquidity can be altered by the financial market regulations, thereby improving firm-level governance. In empirical analysis, we show that stock liquidity decreases stock price crash-risk. We identify two possible mechanisms through which stock liquidity reduces stock price crash-risk: the threat of intervention and price informativeness.

This paper empirically investigates the adoption of stock option plans and their effects on firm performance in Japan. Using the sample of the period of corporate governance reform in the 2000s, we find that the adoption of stock option plans was more likely at firms in an industry where many firms had already introduced stock option plans. The result indicates a type of herding behavior among Japanese firms. We further find that firms rushed to grant stock options just before the adoption of the new accounting standard (ASBJ Statement No. 8). Unique to Japan, this standard requires stock option expensing only for newly granted options. We also find that operating performance decreased, but that payout and liquidity ratios remained almost constant after the adoption of stock option plans. Overall, the results do not support the view, at least in the Japanese context, that stock options can function as a primary incentive for improving firm performance.

Previous studies on the choice of stock payment in M&A mainly focus on managerial private information. This study shows that managers also learn new firm-specific information from financial markets in making this decision. The acquirer's stock price firm-specific information increases the stock-payment-to-Q sensitivity. The target's stock price firm-specific information decreases the stock payment probability. Further analyses on deal and firm characteristics as well as shareholder wealth in stock mergers support the managerial learning argument. Overall, this study highlights a new set of information that affects the form of merger payment in mergers and acquisitions.

We examine whether controlling shareholders who plan for stock gifts would manage earnings in an attempt to depress stock prices prior to gifting stocks to related parties. Gift taxes are levied based on the average market value of the stock transferred for a certain period known as the valuation period. This process enables controlling shareholders to be incentivized to depress stock prices during this period and thereby alleviate tax burden. We discover that the firms that have stock gift transactions in the sample significantly decrease their discretionary accruals in the quarters that precede and/or overlap with the valuation period. Earnings management that decreases income is statistically significant when stock gifts are made for individuals who are the related parties and family members of controlling shareholders. By contrast, we do not observe a similar earnings-management behavior in cases where stock gifts are donated to institutional donees who are not subject to gift taxes.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of value-at-risk (VaR) in the cross-section of stock returns in the Indian stock market during the period 1999-2014. Design/methodology/approach The paper follows the methodology of Bali and Cakici (2004) to investigate the relationship between VaR and stock returns and employs Fama and French’s (1993) and Fama and Macbeth’s (1973) methods to find out the predictive power of VaR in time-series and cross-section settings. Further, it follows Fama and French (2008) to estimate separate cross-section regressions for small, medium and big stocks to verify the pervasiveness of the anomaly. Findings This study finds positive risk premium associated with VaR in the Indian stock market during 2001-2008, the period of short selling constraint for institutional investors. This premium is confined to small stocks and low institutional holdings. The positive premium can be attributed to short selling constraints. Practical implications The risk-return tradeoff can be utilized by investors and fund managers. As it is confined to small stocks, transaction costs may affect the profitability of the investment strategy. Originality/value The study contributes to the scanty empirical literature on the role of VaR in the cross-section of expected stock returns. Moreover, this is the first study that explores the relationship between VaR and stock returns in the asset pricing context for the Indian stock market.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine the cross-sectional predictive power and the information content of volatility smirks for future stock returns using single stock options. Design/methodology/approach The study uses Fama-Macbeth procedure and portfolio approach to investigate the predictability and informativeness in a setup when options settlement style is changed from American to European. Findings The study reports that the volatility smirk of European style options, unlike American style options, predict the underlying cross-sectional equity returns. Firms with steepest volatility smirk underperform firms with flatter volatility smirks, by an average of 3.28 and 4.01 per cent annually for American and European options, respectively. The results are robust to the control of idiosyncratic and systematic risk factors. Practical implications The results confirm that a trader with negative information prefers to trade out-of-the-money put options. The more pronounced results of European options designate the trader’s preference to less risky European style stock options. Results are robust and signify the delay of equity market in incorporating information impounded in the volatility smirk. Originality/value Very few studies examine smirk and returns relationship and to the best of the authors’ knowledge, no study exists that examine the unique case of change in options style and its role in affecting relationship between smirk and future returns.

We investigate the importance of ambiguity, or Knightian uncertainty, in executives' decisions about when to exercise stock options. We develop an empirical estimate of ambiguity and include it in regression models alongside the more traditional measure of risk, equity volatility. We show that each variable has a statistically significant effect on the timing of option exercises, with volatility causing executives to hold their options longer in order to preserve remaining option value, and ambiguity increasing the tendency for executives to exercise early in response to risk aversion. Regression estimates for the volatility and ambiguity variables imply similar magnitudes of economic impact upon the exercise decision, with the volatility variable being about 2.5 times stronger.

In the beginning of the twentieth century, as Americans erupted in righteous indignation over the flagrant abuses of monopoly utilities, utility executives responded by developing several strategies to improve public opinion, rein in regulation, and thwart public ownership. One of the most widely used and successful of these strategies was selling gas, electricity, and telephone company stock directly to customers. To reach these local customers, utility managers required their employees to peddle stock directly to their friends, family, and customers. Using this method, utilities reached a large number of Americans who would not normally have set up a brokerage account or been solicited by a securities sales agent. By farming these interstitial regions of America’s financial landscape, utility executives harvested millions of dollars in capital, but as executives explicitly made clear, the goal of customer stock ownership was not to raise capital but to raise political support. By the crash of 1929, utilities directly sold stock to 20 percent of the total number of stockholding Americans directly through customer stock ownership programs and not through traditional brokerage firms. This article situates the development of customer stock ownership in the political economic context from which it emerged as an organizational response, reveals the social and organizational processes by which utility monopolies sold stock, and appraises the effect of customer stock ownership on antimonopoly sentiment in America.

Introduction: The use of neural networks for non-linear models helps to understand where linear model drawbacks, coused by their specification, reveal themselves. This paper attempts to find this out. The objective of research is to determine the meaning of “option prices calculation using neural networks”. Materials and Methods: We use two kinds of variables: endogenous (variables included in the model of neural network) and variables affecting on the model (permanent disturbance). Results: All data are divided into 3 sets: learning, affirming and testing. All selected variables are normalised from 0 to 1. Extreme values of income were shortcut. Discussion and Conclusions: Using the 33-14-1 neural network with direct links we obtained two sets of forecasts. Optimal criteria of strategies in stock markets’ option pricing were developed.

An Asian option is a special type of option contract which reduces the volatility inherent in the option because of the averaging feature, so it is one of the most actively exotic options traded in today’s financial derivative market. As an application of the uncertain process in the field of finance, the uncertain finance assumes that the asset price follows an uncertain differential equation. In this paper, Asian options are proposed in the uncertain financial market based on a mean-reverting stock model and their pricing formulas are derived. In addition, some numerical algorithms are designed to compute the prices of the Asian options on the basis of the pricing formulas.

This work is devoted to the analysis and evolution of the value function of American type options on a dividend paying stock under jump diffusion processes. An equivalent form of the value function is obtained and analyzed. Moreover, variational inequalities satisfied by this function are investigated. These results can be used to investigate the optimal hedging strategies and optimal exercise boundaries of the corresponding options.

The Indian capital market has been always a subject of curiosity and research. Extensive research has been conducted over the years to predict the index, arguably till date no model could closely predict the index. It is also observed that the Indian stock market follows global cues which partially decide its direction for the day’s trading. Considering this fact, an attempt is made to study the global markets, to establish a mathematical model for forecasting the value of S&P BSE Sensex. The study employs a multiple regression model on daily stock prices of S&P BSE Sensex and few major global stock indices that would help an average investor to make an informed investment decision in Indian stock markets. It would act as a base for investors to take long term positions on the stocks traded on the exchange. The model would also help the policy makers to review key policy decisions based on global cues.

Using a sample of 932 listed firms and 2492 firm-year observations during the period of 2008–2014, this paper investigates the impact of equity incentive plans (EIPs) on the information environment of financial analysts, as reflected in the prominent analysts’ outputs – earnings forecasts and stock recommendations, in China’s unique corporate setting. It finds that analysts’ forecast accuracy is noticeably higher for listed firms with higher levels of management compensation in the form of EIPs. In addition, financial analysts are more likely to issue favourable stock recommendations for listed firms granting management stock options. Moreover, analysts’ forecast accuracy (dispersion/bias) appears to be considerably improved (reduced) when listed firms choose to use restricted stock units (RSUs), instead of stock options, in their EIPs, suggesting that the two types of equity incentives – stock options or RSUs – have different impacts on analysts’ earnings forecasts. Overall, the empirical results of this study are consistent with the alignment view of managerial incentives. This study also shows that not all equity incentives have the same alignment effect. Indeed, compared to RSUs, the alignment effect of stock options is likely to be offset by managers’ short-term opportunity behaviours.

Employee stock options (ESOs) are an instrument in compensating top management of corporations. In the literature, they are described as a variable component of remuneration of a long-term character (Borkowska, 2012). There are six characteristic elements of the ESO: a grant date, the ESO plan duration, employees entitled to receive options, vesting criteria, a vesting period, and an exercise price. The article refers to the exercise price. The remuneration of employees is determined by the option’s intrinsic value, i.e. the difference between the current stock price and the exercise price. This difference affects the costs incurred by a company in relation with their incentive stock option plan. In this connection, the exercise price of stock options needs to be analysed. The literature shows that usually the strike price is equal to the stock market’s value at the time the option is granted. The options issued with an exercise price equal to the market value of the company’s stock on the date of the grant usually lead to at-the-money options. Walker (2009) mentions that almost all options issued by US firms have been such type of options. Hence, the options with exercise prices less than the prices of the underlying assets have been rarely observed. One of the solutions can be discounting the exercise price by using sectoral indexes, which are sensitive to changes on a particular market. The purpose of this paper is to address several aspects of specifying the exercise price in ESOs. The research shows how sector indexes can be used to discount it. Using sectoral indexes in determining the exercise price can partly limit the unreasonably high profits from the ESO. The literature does not provide ready-made formulas of exercise prices based on specific variables. The aim of the research is to present and apply the formula of the exercise prices in which sectoral indices are used to discount. The data are from the Warsaw Stock Exchange (WSE) and include those companies that revealed the information concerning their incentive programs in 1999–2013. The relevant data come from annual reports, current reports, supervisory boards’ resolutions, and press announcements.

Owing to special characteristics, classic option pricing models are not well suited to the valuation of employee stock options (ESOs). This paper attempts to conduct a more general fair value estimation based on attaching performance targets to option vesting. Considering a setting that includes factors such as options that may be exercised early at employee discretion, employee exit rates and firm default risk, this paper presents a sensitivity analysis and empirical tests of option value. The results highlight the importance of considering the characteristics of ESOs in the design of performance-vested option plans so as to provide the most attractive incentives for employees.

The purpose of the article is to improve monitoring and control in the system of state regulation of the stock market and to develop practical recommendations for an integrated mechanism, which is aimed at stabilizing and improving the functioning of its state regulators. Methodology. The following research methods were used: analysis and synthesis – to identify the most important factors affecting the operation of the stock market, consolidation of trends and evaluation the effectiveness of individual measures of government regulation; statistical analysis, comparison and generalization – to study the effectiveness of the regulatory bodies of the stock market in Ukraine. Results. It’s necessary to introduce deoffshorization, which is a tool of economic mechanism of the development of state regulation of the stock market and optimal combination of the tax burden, comfortable business environment and the country’s stock market capitalization. Practical significance. Practical recommendations on the need to introduce deoffshorization in the stock market of Ukraine are seen as a tool of economic mechanism for further state regulation development of the stock market, used in the formation of proposals to introduce deoffshorization in the stock market in the Regulations of the National Commission on Securities and Stock Market. Value/originality. Implementation of the deoffshorization in the stock market will allow the State to strengthen the protection of investors’ rights, it is a strategic goal of Ukraine, as well as to strengthen the local stock market and increase its credibility among the population.

Asset selection and timing decisions are major investment concerns. To resolve these issues simultaneously, a new class of rainbow trend options is proposed. The diversification effect of rainbow options can reduce the importance of asset selection decisions and trend options can mitigate unfavorable effects on market entry and exit decisions. We consider a general framework to facilitate the derivation of analytic pricing formulas for simple, pure, and Asian rainbow trend options using the martingale pricing method. The properties of these options and their Greeks are analyzed. We also investigate the performance of the dynamic delta hedging strategy for issuers of rainbow trend options. Last, this paper explores the applications of rainbow trend options for hedging price risks, designing executive stock options, modifying countercyclical capital buffer proposed by Basel Committee, and acting as control variates of the Monte Carlo simulation.

We investigate the relation between the option returns and the underlying stock's lottery-like characteristics. Call options written on the most lottery-like stocks underperform otherwise similar call options written on the least lottery-like stocks by 10–20% per month. Moreover, the more lottery-like the underlying stocks, the further and more frequently the options deviate from the put–call parity in the direction induced by overvalued calls. Furthermore, the lottery-like characteristic effect is stronger during periods of high investor sentiment. The results suggest that optimism-induced gambling preference causes lottery-like options to be overvalued.

This paper analyzes the impact of compensation offered in the future on the incentive effects of executive stock options that have already been granted. I show that in many cases, subsequent compensation in the form of options is more likely to maintain the incentive effects of existing options than the subsequent grant of cash salaries or stock. The numerical results explain why firms continue to grant options repeatedly to executives. I suggest that, when designing pay packages or estimating the sensitivity of executive pay to firm performance, we should consider the impact of future compensation.