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Review of Finance Vol. 13 No. 1 2009

Option Compensation and Industry Competition

Neal M. Stoughton1; Kit Pong Wong2

1 University of Calgary 1 · 2 The University of Hong Kong 2

open access

Abstract

Compensation policy has become one of the most important ingredients of corporate governance. In this paper we take a new look at the issue, by contrasting the use of options with that of stock. We do this by integrating the repricing or resetting aspect of options with that of industrial structure. We show that industry competition may play an important role in dictating which form of compensation is optimal. When aggressive competition for key professional staff is an issue, the flexibility of options may actually become a disadvantage and therefore pure stock compensation may survive as an equilibrium. Thus compensation trends may be partly explained by trends in the nature of the competitive environment.

DOI
10.1093/rof/rfn001
Volume
13
Issue
1
Pages
147-180
Language
en
Sources
bibtex:phds-export.bib openalex crossref

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