股票期权激励与资本结构决策

股票期权激励与资本结构决策
张东旭¹，汪猛²，徐经长³
（1.安徽大学商学院，安徽合肥230601；
2.上海立信会计金融学院会计学院，上海201620；
3.中国人民大学商学院，北京100872）
摘要：最优契约理论与管理者权力理论是解释高管薪酬激励效果差异的两种重要理论。本文基于资本结构决策视角，从资本结构的调整速度以及最优资本结构的偏离度两方面讨论了以上两种理论的适用性问题。研究发现，与未实施股权激励的样本相比，实施股权激励的样本有着更快的资本结构调整速度，且其与目标资本结构的偏离度也更小，支持最优契约理论。在控制了遗漏变量、样本自选择问题后，该结论依然成立。进一步的研究发现，国有样本中的股权激励与资本结构决策并不存在上述关系。本文的研究结论对优化企业的薪酬激励机制以及完善证监会《上市公司股权激励管理办法》均有一定的启发意义。
关键词：股票期权激励；资本结构；最优契约理论；高管权力理论
主要研究结论：本文以2006-2014年A股上市公司为研究样本，对股票期权激励和资本结构决策之间的关系进行了实证检验。研究发现，与非股权激励样本相比，股权激励样本的资本结构调整速度更快，且股权激励样本的资本结构偏离度更低。在考虑遗漏变量、互为因果以及样本选择偏误后，本文的研究结论依然成立。进一步研究发现，与国有产权样本相比，非国有产权样本因股权激励所导致的资本结构调整速度更快、资本结构偏离度更小。
本文的研究发现具有重要的理论意义和实践价值。从理论上看，本研究发现最优契约理论更适用于解释中国的股权激励实践，这为最优契约理论和管理权力理论的争论提供了来自于中国企业的证据。本研究发现产权性质会影响到股权激励的实际效果，这丰富了不同公司治理机制间相互作用的文献。从企业实践上看，本研究发现股权激励提高了负债决策效率，这表明证监会2006年在上市公司中引入股权激励机制的政策目标基本实现。同时，本研究发现产权性质是影响股权激励效果的重要因素，该发现要求监管者在针对股权激励的监管过程中，需要区分企业的产权性质，以提高监管活动的针对性；而且还要求企业股东在实施股权激励时，需要完善其他公司治理机制，以提高股权激励计划的实施效果。

Stock option incentive and capital structure decision making
Zhang Dongxu¹, Wang Meng², Xu Jingchang³
(1. School of Business, Anhui University, Hefei 230601, Anhui, China;
2. School of Accounting, Shanghai Lixin University of Accounting and Finance, Shanghai 201620, China;
3. School of Business,Renmin University of China, Beijing 100872, China）
Abstract:Since the implementation of the “Rules for Equity Incentives of Listed Companies”, a growing number of enterprises have begun to implement equity incentives, but the actual effect of equity incentives is still unclear. Theoretically, both the optimal contract theory and the managerial power theory can explain the actual incentive effect of equity incentives. Therefore, it is necessary to test the applicability of the above two theories by empirical research. As an important part of executive decision-making, capital structure decision-making is obviously affected by agency costs, but it is not clear whether equity incentives can alleviate the agency problem in capital structure decision-making. This paper will directly test the relationship between equity incentives and capital structure decision-making.
In this paper, all the A-share listed companies in 2006-2014 were taken as the initial research samples. On this basis, the samples of financial enterprises and the samples with missing variables were deleted, and a total of 2,713 firm-year samples were obtained. Among them, there were 835 equity incentive samples. This paper empirically tests the relationship between equity incentives and the adjustment speed toward to the company's target capital structure, and the relationship between equity incentives and the deviation of target capital structure, when the capital structure of the enterprise deviates from the target capital structure. At the same time, the paper also examines the difference of the above relationships under different property rights.
The study found that, compared with the non-equity incentive group, the capital structure of the equity incentive group is adjusted to the target capital structure faster, and this discovery is also supported when different methods are used to measure the asset-liability ratio of the enterprise. At the same time, compared with the non-equity incentive group, the capital structure of the equity incentive group has less deviation from the target capital structure, and this finding is true in both the positive deviation sample and the negative deviation sample. The study found that it was still established after using the following methods to control endogenous problems. First, controlling executive stock holding variables, executive monetary compensation variables, board size variables, and the largest shareholder shareholding variable; second, using industry, year and size variables for matching; third, using PSM method for matching. The above findings show that the equity incentives in the Chinese context have a certain incentive effect. Equity incentive contracts reduce the opportunistic behavior of executives by increasing the consistency of the interests of executives and shareholders, and improve the efforts of executives to achieve optimal capital structure decisions. The finding also shows that the optimal contract theory is more suitable for explaining the equity incentive practice of Chinese companies.
Further researches also found that the relationship between equity incentives and the speed of capital structure adjustment, and the relationship between equity incentives and the deviation of target capital structure is only confirmed in the sample of non-state-owned enterprises. The findings indicate that the property rights of state-owned enterprises partially offset the positive corporate governance effect of equity incentives. Due to the multiple principal-agent problems of state-owned enterprises and the pay control faced by state-owned enterprises, the equity incentives of state-owned enterprises do not have an incentive effect, and are more manifested as the result of executive rent-seeking. The findings also indicate that the role of equity incentive governance depends on the degree of perfection of other corporate governance mechanisms.
The research in this paper may have the following innovations:
First, this paper enriches the literature on the economic consequences of equity incentives from the perspective of capital structure decision-making. The existing literature focuses on the economic consequences of equity incentives from the aspects of static capital structure, cost of capital, loan term, and risk-taking. There is no research about the impact of equity incentives in the view of dynamic capital structure. Since the deviation of the target capital structure becomes inevitable because the enterprise is in a dynamic business environment, the research of the dynamic perspective will be more in line with the actual operating conditions of the enterprise, and is an important supplement to the above research perspective.
Second, this paper enriches the literature about the factors affecting capital structure from the perspective of equity incentives. It has been found that the capital structure differences at the cross-sectional level of the company are difficult to be explained by traditional determinants, and the unexplained variations of this part may be explained by corporate governance factors. The conclusions of this paper indicate that the equity incentive mechanism in corporate governance has an incremental explanatory power for the difference in capital structure at the company level. This paper is an important supplement to the above research perspective.
Third, this paper manifests a new path for equity incentives to affect corporate performance. That is, equity incentives can play a role in optimizing corporate performance by affecting the company's capital structure decisions.
The conclusions of this paper have certain enlightening significance for policy formulation. First, the relationship between equity incentives and dynamic adjustment of capital structure indicates that the “Rules for Equity Incentives of Listed Companies” has certain incentive effects. Therefore, the “Rules for Equity Incentives of Listed Companies” should be further improved and promoted. Second, the relationship between equity incentives and dynamic adjustment of capital structure under different property rights indicates that differences in property rights will lead to differences in incentive effects. Therefore, regulators should implement pointed regulations on enterprises with different property rights to enhance the targeting of regulatory activities. At the same time, listed companies also need to improve their corporate governance mechanisms while implementing the equity incentive plan.
In the future, we can further expand the research conclusions of this paper from the following aspects. First, although this paper has found that the equity incentive plan has certain incentives, it is not clear how different equity incentive arrangements will affect its incentive effect. Therefore, it is possible to specifically study how the exercise term, incentive method, and performance target setting in the equity incentive contract affect the decision-making of the capital structure of the enterprise. Second, the focus of this paper is on the impact of equity incentives on dynamic capital structure decisions. However, the current research has not paid attention to the impact of equity incentives on debt costs and loan maturities. Therefore, the impact of equity incentives about factors such as capital costs and loan maturities can be specifically studied.
Keywords: stock option incentive; capital structure; optimal contracting theory; managerial power theory
引用本文：张东旭,汪猛,徐经长.股票期权激励与资本结构决策[J].科研管理,2019,40(06):175-183.
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