IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/jbfnac/v30y2003i5-6p669-698.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Effect of Exercise Date Uncertainty on Employee Stock Option Value

Author

Listed:
  • Brian A. Maris
  • Jo‐Mae Maris
  • Tyler T. Yang

Abstract

The IASC recently recommended that employee compensation in the form of stock options be measured at the ‘fair value’ based on an option pricing model and the value should be recognized in financial statements. This follows adoption of SFAS No. 123 in the United States, which requires firms to estimate the value of employee stock options using either a Black‐Scholes or binomial model. Most US firms used the B‐S model for their 1996 financial statements. This study assumes that option life follows a Gamma distribution, allowing the variance of option life to be separate from its expected life. The results indicate the adjusted Black‐Scholes model could overvalue employee stock options on the grant date by as much as 72 percent for nondividend paying firms and by as much as 84 percent for dividend paying firms. The results further demonstrate the sensitivity of ESO values to the volatility of the expected option life, a parameter that the B‐S model or a Poisson process cannot accommodate. The variability of option life has an especially big impact on ESO value for firms whose ESOs have a relatively short life (5 years, for example) and high employee turnover. For such firms, the results indicate a binomial option pricing model is more appropriate for estimating ESO value than the B‐S type model.

Suggested Citation

  • Brian A. Maris & Jo‐Mae Maris & Tyler T. Yang, 2003. "The Effect of Exercise Date Uncertainty on Employee Stock Option Value," Journal of Business Finance & Accounting, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 30(5‐6), pages 669-698, June.
  • Handle: RePEc:bla:jbfnac:v:30:y:2003:i:5-6:p:669-698
    DOI: 10.1111/1468-5957.05390
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-5957.05390
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/1468-5957.05390?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Vasicek, Oldrich, 1977. "An equilibrium characterization of the term structure," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 5(2), pages 177-188, November.
    2. Vasicek, Oldrich Alfonso, 1977. "Abstract: An Equilibrium Characterization of the Term Structure," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 12(4), pages 627-627, November.
    3. Nelson, Daniel B & Ramaswamy, Krishna, 1990. "Simple Binomial Processes as Diffusion Approximations in Financial Models," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 3(3), pages 393-430.
    4. Hemmer, Thomas & Matsunaga, Steve & Shevlin, Terry, 1996. "The influence of risk diversification on the early exercise of employee stock options by executive officers," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 21(1), pages 45-68, February.
    5. Carpenter, Jennifer N., 1998. "The exercise and valuation of executive stock options," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 48(2), pages 127-158, May.
    6. Cuny, Charles J. & Jorion, Philippe, 1995. "Valuing executive stock options with endogenous departure," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 20(2), pages 193-205, September.
    7. Jimmy E. Hilliard & James B. Kau & V. Carlos Slawson, 1998. "Valuing Prepayment and Default in a Fixed‐Rate Mortgage: A Bivariate Binomial Options Pricing Technique," Real Estate Economics, American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association, vol. 26(3), pages 431-468, September.
    8. Huddart, Steven & Lang, Mark, 1996. "Employee stock option exercises an empirical analysis," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 21(1), pages 5-43, February.
    9. Craig McCann, 1994. "How (And Why) Companies Should Value Their Employee Stock Options," Journal of Applied Corporate Finance, Morgan Stanley, vol. 7(2), pages 91-99, June.
    10. Black, Fischer, 1976. "The pricing of commodity contracts," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 3(1-2), pages 167-179.
    11. Yang, Tyler T & Maris, Brian A, 1996. "Mortgage Prepayment with an Uncertain Holding Period," The Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, Springer, vol. 12(2), pages 179-194, March.
    12. Huddart, Steven, 1994. "Employee stock options," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 18(2), pages 207-231, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Eugene Kang & Brian R. Tan, 2008. "Accounting Choices and Director Interlocks: A Social Network Approach to the Voluntary Expensing of Stock Option Grants," Journal of Business Finance & Accounting, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 35(9-10), pages 1079-1102.
    2. Anne Farrell & Susan Krische & Karen Sedatole, 2007. "Archival and experimental evidence on employees subjective valuations of stock options," Framed Field Experiments 00114, The Field Experiments Website.
    3. Karen Alpert, 2010. "Taxation and the Early Exercise of Call Options," Journal of Business Finance & Accounting, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 37(5‐6), pages 715-736, June.
    4. Eugene Kang & Brian R. Tan, 2008. "Accounting Choices and Director Interlocks: A Social Network Approach to the Voluntary Expensing of Stock Option Grants," Journal of Business Finance & Accounting, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 35(9‐10), pages 1079-1102, November.
    5. Karen Alpert, 2010. "Taxation and the Early Exercise of Call Options," Journal of Business Finance & Accounting, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 37(5-6), pages 715-736.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Lim, Terence & Lo, Andrew W. & Merton, Robert C. & Scholes, Myron S., 2006. "The Derivatives Sourcebook," Foundations and Trends(R) in Finance, now publishers, vol. 1(5–6), pages 365-572, April.
    2. repec:dau:papers:123456789/9550 is not listed on IDEAS
    3. Paul André & M. Martin Boyer & Robert Gagné, 2002. "Do CEOs Exercise Their Stock Options Earlier than Other Executives?," CIRANO Working Papers 2002s-71, CIRANO.
    4. Philip Brown & Alex Szimayer, 2008. "Valuing executive stock options: performance hurdles, early exercise and stochastic volatility," Accounting and Finance, Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 48(3), pages 363-389, September.
    5. repec:dau:papers:123456789/13098 is not listed on IDEAS
    6. Suresh M. Sundaresan, 2000. "Continuous‐Time Methods in Finance: A Review and an Assessment," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 55(4), pages 1569-1622, August.
    7. Grasselli, Matheus & Henderson, Vicky, 2009. "Risk aversion and block exercise of executive stock options," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 33(1), pages 109-127, January.
    8. Tim Leung & Ronnie Sircar, 2009. "Accounting For Risk Aversion, Vesting, Job Termination Risk And Multiple Exercises In Valuation Of Employee Stock Options," Mathematical Finance, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 19(1), pages 99-128, January.
    9. Sautner, Zacharias & Weber, Martin, 2005. "Stock options and employee behavior," Papers 05-26, Sonderforschungsbreich 504.
    10. Hamza Bahaji, 2009. "Contribution à l'analyse des déterminants du comportement d'exercice des porteurs de stock options : une étude empirique sur le marché Américain," Working Papers halshs-00512840, HAL.
    11. Klein, Daniel, 2018. "Executive turnover and the valuation of stock options," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 48(C), pages 76-93.
    12. Hamza Bahaji, 2018. "Are employee stock option exercise decisions better explained through the prospect theory?," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 262(2), pages 335-359, March.
    13. Stefan Winter, 1998. "Zur Eignung von Aktienoptionsplänen als Motivationsinstrument für Manager," Schmalenbach Journal of Business Research, Springer, vol. 50(12), pages 1120-1142, December.
    14. Sautner, Zacharias & Weber, Martin, 2005. "Subjective stock option values and exercise decisions : determinants and consistency," Papers 05-31, Sonderforschungsbreich 504.
    15. Brookfield, David & Ormrod, Phillip, 2000. "Executive stock options: volatility, managerial decisions and agency costs," Journal of Multinational Financial Management, Elsevier, vol. 10(3-4), pages 275-295, December.
    16. Raimbourg, Philippe & Zimmermann, Paul, 2022. "Is normal backwardation normal? Valuing financial futures with a local index-rate covariance," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 298(1), pages 351-367.
    17. Bettis, J. Carr & Bizjak, John M. & Lemmon, Michael L., 2005. "Exercise behavior, valuation, and the incentive effects of employee stock options," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 76(2), pages 445-470, May.
    18. Carpenter, Jennifer N. & Stanton, Richard & Wallace, Nancy, 2010. "Optimal exercise of executive stock options and implications for firm cost," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 98(2), pages 315-337, November.
    19. Kimura, Toshikazu, 2010. "Valuing executive stock options: A quadratic approximation," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 207(3), pages 1368-1379, December.
    20. Allan Jonathan da Silva & Jack Baczynskiy & José Valentim M. Vicente, 2015. "A Discrete Monitoring Method for Pricing Asian Interest Rate Options," Working Papers Series 409, Central Bank of Brazil, Research Department.
    21. Bjork, Tomas, 2009. "Arbitrage Theory in Continuous Time," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, edition 3, number 9780199574742.
    22. Takami, Marcelo Yoshio & Tabak, Benjamin Miranda, 2008. "Interest rate option pricing and volatility forecasting: An application to Brazil," Chaos, Solitons & Fractals, Elsevier, vol. 38(3), pages 755-763.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:jbfnac:v:30:y:2003:i:5-6:p:669-698. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/journal.asp?ref=0306-686X .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.