A market-leveraged stock unit (MSU) is a form of employee compensation in which the number of shares received on the vesting date depends on the stock price at that time. MSUs have been proposed as a way of overcoming some of the drawbacks of stock options and restricted stock units. In this...

Prior literature refers to economic incentives to generate investment banking business and trading commissions as explanations for analyst publication of forecasts of firms' long-term earnings growth (LTG). Prior research also documents wildly optimistic LTG forecasts and a negative relation...

We investigate the impact of independent valuation specialists on the downward bias of pre-initial public offering employee stock option valuations. Undervalued stock price estimates underlying firms' option grants produce option valuations that overstate earnings and provide employees with deep...