Two Essays On Executive Compensation And External Financing Decisions

Download or read book Two Essays on Executive Compensation and External Financing Decisions written by Eric Brisker and published by . This book was released on 2012 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ABSTRACT: My dissertation examines the impact that executive compensation has on external financing decisions. In my first essay I examine the long-run stock and operating performance of firms following seasoned equity offerings based on the level of equity-based compensation the top five managers receive. I find that firms paying high levels of equity-based compensation experience lower abnormal stock returns and less favorable changes in operating performance in the three-year period following the issue than firms paying low, or no, equity-based compensation. Moreover, in calendar-time regressions, post-issue stock returns of issuers who pay high equity-based compensation do not load significantly on an investment factor, suggesting that these issuers have non-investment motives. Overall the findings support the premise that managers receiving high equity-based compensation act in the interest of current shareholders by issuing equity when they believe their stock is overvalued, while managers receiving low equity-based compensation do not. My second essay examines to what extent executive stock options received by the top five executives affects capital structure decisions and the debt-equity choice, and whether these effects are strengthened when a firm is near, or has recently received, a credit rating change. I hypothesize that executives receiving higher levels of stock options, especially stock options held that are in-the-money, as a percentage of their overall compensation are more risk averse due to greater sensitivity of their personal wealth portfolios to firm stock performance. As a result, they reduce the riskiness of the firm by reducing the amount of debt in the capital structure of the firm and issuing equity rather than debt when raising external financing. I also expect that the risk reduction is more pronounced when the firm is near a credit rating upgrade or downgrade, or has recently received a credit rating downgrade.