Our study investigates how executive and non-executive employee ownership affects the risk-taking behavior of European banks, which has become an important issue for regulators as supportive policies promoting employee ownership are implemented. The extant literature on banking firms provides mixed results, focusing exclusively on executive ownership. We investigate channels that could shed light on the inconsistent of these findings. Using data from 2005 to 2019, we find that both executive and non-executive ownership are associated with lower bank risk, depending on employee ability and incentives to take risks. We address endogeneity issues related to banking risk and employee ownership by considering employees' long-term orientation. Our results indicate that policymakers should encourage broad-based employee ownership plans in the banking industry.

我们的研究调查了高管和非高管员工持股如何影响欧洲银行的风险承担行为，随着促进员工持股的支持性政策的实施，这已成为监管机构的一个重要问题。现有关于银行公司的文献提供了不同的结果，仅关注高管所有权。我们调查了可能揭示这些发现的不一致之处的渠道。使用 2005 年至 2019 年的数据，我们发现高管和非执行所有权都与较低的银行风险相关，具体取决于员工承担风险的能力和动机。我们通过考虑员工的长期导向来解决与银行风险和员工所有权相关的内生性问题。我们的研究结果表明，政策制定者应鼓励银行业实施广泛的员工持股计划。