Abstract: There is an ongoing debate on whether risk-taking incentives align risk-averse managers’ interests with those of shareholders or whether such incentives lead to excessively risky firm and leverage policies. In this study, we shed light on this debate by using CEO risk-taking incentives, measured by the sensitivity of CEO wealth to changes in stock return volatility (Vega), and explain how Vega affects firms’ security issuance and repurchase activities. In general, we find that a higher Vega increases (decreases) the likelihood of debt issuance (share issuance) and it decreases (increases) the propensity of debt retirement (share repurchase). However, in high-levered firms, the positive effect of Vega on debt issuance and the negative influence of Vega on debt retirement are diminished. One the other hand, for equity issuance and repurchases, high leverage does not seem to alter the impact of Vega. These findings have three main implications: 1) in general, CEO risk-taking incentives (Vega) do affect the financing decisions of firms by increasing firms’ degree of leverage, (2) when existing leverage is high, CEO risk-taking incentives do not seem to induce CEOs to take excessive financial risks through debt issuance, but such incentives encourage them to continue repurchasing shares that would lead to even higher debt ratios and non-operational risks, and (3) firms with high Vega do not seem to adopt target debt ratios. JEL Classification: G30, G32, J33

Thesis advisor: Ronnie Sadka / This dissertation is comprised of three essays which examine the ramifications of executive compensation incentive structures on corporate outcomes. In the first essay, I present evidence which suggests that executive compensation convexity, measured as the sensitivity of managerial equity compensation portfolios to stock volatility, predicts firm-specific crashes. I find that a bottom-to-top decile change in compensation convexity results in a 21% increase in a firm's unconditional ex-post idiosyncratic crash risk. In contrast, I do not find robust evidence of a symmetric relation between compensation convexity and a firm's idiosyncratic positive jump risk. Finally, I exploit exogenous variation in compensation convexity, arising from a change in the expensing treatment of executive stock options, in buttressing my interpretations within a natural experiment setting. My results suggest that managerial equity compensation portfolios do not augment a firm's future idiosyncratic crash risk because they link managerial wealth to equity prices, but rather because they tie managerial wealth to the volatility of a firm's equity. In the second essay, I exploit an exogenous negative shock to CEO compensation convexity in examining the differential ramifications of option pay and risk-taking incentives on the systematic and idiosyncratic volatility of the firm. I find new evidence that is largely consistent with the notion that compensation convexity, stemming from option convexity, predominantly incentivizes under-diversified risk-averse CEOs to increase the value of their option portfolios by increasing the systematic volatility of the firms they manage. I hypothesize that this effect manifests as systematic volatility is readily more hedgeable than idiosyncratic volatility from the perspective of risk-averse executives who are overexposed to the idiosyncratic risk of their firms. If managers use options as a conduit through which they can gamble with shareholder wealth by overexposing them to suboptimal systematic volatility, options are not serving their intended contracting function. Instead of decreasing agency costs of risk, by encouraging CEOs to adopt innovative positive NPV projects that may be primarily characterized by idiosyncratic risk, option pay may have contributed to the same frictions it was intended to reduce. In the third essay, I present evidence that is consistent with the notion that certain managerial debt-like remuneration structures decrease the likelihood of firm-specific positive stock-price jumps. Namely, I find that a bottom-to-top decile increase in the present value of CEO pension pay leads to a roughly 25\% decrease in a firm's unconditional ex-post jump probability. However, I do not find that CEO deferred compensation decreases firm jump risk. Finally, I find that information in option-implied volatility smirks does not appear to reflect these dynamics. Together, these results suggest that not all debt-like compensation mechanisms decrease managerial risk-taking equally. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2015. / Submitted to: Boston College. Carroll School of Management. / Discipline: Finance.