股权激励与风险承担——来自中国上市公司的证据

Equity Incentive and Risk Taking:Evidence from China Listed Companies

中国的股权激励正式实施已逾十年,相当数量的股权激励方案进入行权期,但是,已有研究大都关注股权激励方案设计、公告和授予阶段高管的机会主义行为,对股权激励正向效应的分析较少,且主要集中在股权激励带来的利益协同效应上,忽视了风险承担激励。本文分别用高管财富—股票价格敏感性(Delt a)和高管财富-股票收益波动率敏感性(Vega)来度量利益协同效应和风险承担效应,实证检验了股权激励与企业风险承担水平和政策选择之间的关系。研究结果表明,Vega与公司风险承担水平显著正相关,国有企业的这种风险承担效应没有民营企业表现得明显。在企业的政策选择方面,Vega提高了企业的经营集中度和资产负债率,但是并没有促进R&D投资。本文的研究证实了中国股票期权的激励效果,丰富和拓展了国内股权激励研究,对下一阶段的股权激励方案设计具有一定的指导意义。

China has formally implemented equity incentive for more than 10 years, thus a considerable number of equity incentive programs has entered the vesting stage. This means that it is time to conduct a comprehensive analysis of the incentive effects of equity incentive throughout the whole implementation phase. There have been a large number of literature articles concerning the executives＇ opportunistic behavior during the phase of the design, announcement or award of equity incentive. For example, there are some literatures studying on the earnings management and profit manipulation, which is a manifestation of managers＇ power theory. However, analyses of the positive effect of equity incentive are limited, and they have mainly concentrated on the incentive compatible effect of the equity incentive, ignoring the risk-taking incentive effect. Although the equity incentive in foreign countries has been mature, whether the introduction of equity incentive to China turns out to be effective is a problem worthy of study. Using sensitivity of executives＇ wealth and stock price （Delta） to measure the incentive compatible effect, and sensitivity of executives＇ wealth and stock return volatility （Vega） to measure the risk taking effect, this paper empirically tests the relation between equity incentive and enterprise＇ s risk taking and risk decisions. We find that Vega is positively related to risk taking. However, this improvement was mainly reflected in the private enterprises rather than state-owned enterprises. In terms of corporate policy choice, we find that Vega is positively related to risk taking, industry concentration and asset- liability ratio, but does not promote R＆D investment. And furthermore, the results show that the risk taking brought about by companies which have implemented equity incentive improves the efficiency Of capital allocation. This research confirmed the incentive effect of Chinese equity incentive. It not only riches and expands the research on the executive incentive in China, but also have some implications for the design of Equity incentive program in the next stage.