Investors and academics increasingly criticize that features of employee stock option (ESO) programs reflect rent-extraction by managers (managerial power view). We use a unique European data set to investigate the relationship between the design of ESO programs and corporate governance...

Does more bargaining power of managers inside a firm lead to larger allocations of capital? To tackle this question, we use unique and proprietary panel data on planned and realized capital allocations inside a very large conglomerate. The firm operates worldwide, is headquartered in Europe and...

Stock option programs constitute an important economic domain both for the issuing companies and for their employees. Little is known, however, about which individual variables actually drive exercise patterns and how employees value their stock options. We study the following set of research...

Employee stock options (ESOs) are a widespread and economically highly significant phenomenon, both at the company and at the employee level. Stock options are not only relevant for CEOs, but also and increasingly for managers at lower grades in a corporation. Despite its economic importance,...