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Article
Managers' pay duration and voluntary disclosures
Research Collection School Of Accountancy
  • Qiang CHENG, Singapore Management University
  • Young Jun CHO, Singapore Management University
  • Jae Bum KIM, Singapore Management University
Publication Type
Working Paper
Publication Date
5-2015
Abstract

In this paper, we examine the effect of managers’ pay duration on firms’ voluntary disclosures. Pay duration refers to the average period that it takes for managers’ annual compensation to vest. We hypothesize and find that pay duration can incentivize managers to provide more bad news earnings forecasts. This result holds after controlling for the level of stock-based compensation and the endogeneity of pay duration. In addition, we find that the effect of pay duration is more pronounced for firms with weaker governance and for firms with a more opaque information environment, where the marginal benefits of additional disclosures are higher. Our additional analyses indicate that managers with a longer pay duration issue more accurate earnings forecasts. Overall, our paper contributes to the literature by documenting that lengthening the vesting periods of managers’ compensation can induce managers to be more forthcoming with bad news.

Keywords
  • Voluntary disclosures,
  • management forecasts,
  • executive compensation,
  • pay duration
Discipline
Publisher
SMU School of Accountancy Research Paper Series, Paper 2015-28
City or Country
Singapore
Creative Commons License
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International
Additional URL
https://ssrn.com/abstract=2372814
Citation Information
Qiang CHENG, Young Jun CHO and Jae Bum KIM. "Managers' pay duration and voluntary disclosures" (2015) p. 1 - 50
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/qiang-cheng/48/