We examine the relation between executive equity compensation and corporate disclosure. Specifically, we propose that options and stock awards provide executives with distinct incentives to disclose forecasts to market participants. Since options are risker than stock awards, executives receiving more options will have greater incentives to guide investors and influence the stock price to maximize their compensation payout. We find that a greater proportion of options in executive equity compensation is associated with a greater likelihood to issue earnings forecasts as well as with greater frequency. Overall, these results suggest that options provide executives with stronger incentives than stock awards to mitigate the disclosure agency problem.

我们研究了高管股权薪酬与公司披露之间的关系。具体来说，我们建议期权和股票奖励为高管们提供了向市场参与者披露预测的独特激励。由于期权比股票奖励风险更大，因此获得更多期权的高管将更有动力引导投资者并影响股价以最大化其薪酬支出。我们发现，高管股权薪酬中更大比例的期权与发布盈利预测的可能性更大以及频率更高有关。总体而言，这些结果表明，期权为高管提供了比股票奖励更强的激励，以缓解披露代理问题。