Traditional stock option grant is the most common form of incentive pay in executive compensation. Applying a principal-agent analysis, we find this common practice suboptimal and firms are better off linking incentive pay to average stock prices. Holding the cost of the option grant to the firm...

Existing research examines the impact of volatility shocks on the relative pricing of long-term vs. short-term options and documents patterns of short-horizon underreaction and long-horizon overreaction in the options market. These studies, however, rely on implied volatilities derived from...

Traditional stock option grant is the most common form of incentive pay in executive compensation. Applying a principal-agent analysis, we find this common practice suboptimal and firms are better off linking incentive pay to average stock prices. Among other benefits, averaging reduces...