IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/quaeco/v64y2017icp238-248.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Reexamination of risk-taking incentives in banking: Realign incentives and curtail future episodes of mismanagement

Author

Listed:
  • Yang, Xiaolou

Abstract

CEO incentive compensation, in particular the equity-based compensation, has been blamed for excessive risk-taking by bank CEOs in the recent financial crisis. This study reassesses the impacts of deregulation on the incentives provided to CEOs and examines how bank boards redesigned CEO compensation contracts during and after the crisis to assess if the government interventions are necessary to realign incentives between CEO and shareholders. Employing a multiple-equation model that allows for simultaneity among vega, delta, and bank investment, I found that banks provided high-vega contracts as incentives for bank CEOs to exploit post-deregulation growth opportunities and to shift from traditional on-balance sheet portfolio lending to nontraditional fee-generating activities. No evidence shows the relation between incentive compensation and risk-taking activities before deregulation. In the crisis and post-crisis period, compensation committees attempted to manage excessive risk-taking incentives at these banks by reducing vega and establishing complementarily high values of delta to align incentives between CEOs and shareholders. Especially in the post-crisis period, the value of vega has been decreased significantly, suggesting government intervention of bank’s CEO compensation works effectively to reduce bank risk.

Suggested Citation

  • Yang, Xiaolou, 2017. "Reexamination of risk-taking incentives in banking: Realign incentives and curtail future episodes of mismanagement," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 64(C), pages 238-248.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:quaeco:v:64:y:2017:i:c:p:238-248
    DOI: 10.1016/j.qref.2017.01.015
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1062976917300455
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.qref.2017.01.015?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
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Smith, Clifford Jr. & Watts, Ross L., 1992. "The investment opportunity set and corporate financing, dividend, and compensation policies," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 32(3), pages 263-292, December.
    2. Fahlenbrach, Rüdiger & Stulz, René M., 2011. "Bank CEO incentives and the credit crisis," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 99(1), pages 11-26, January.
    3. Joseph P. Hughes & William W. Lang & Loretta J. Mester & Choon-Geol Moon, 1996. "Efficient banking under interstate branching," Proceedings, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.), pages 1045-1075.
    4. Stiroh, Kevin J, 2004. "Diversification in Banking: Is Noninterest Income the Answer?," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 36(5), pages 853-882, October.
    5. DeYoung, Robert & Roland, Karin P., 2001. "Product Mix and Earnings Volatility at Commercial Banks: Evidence from a Degree of Total Leverage Model," Journal of Financial Intermediation, Elsevier, vol. 10(1), pages 54-84, January.
    6. Brian J. Hall & Jeffrey B. Liebman, 1998. "Are CEOs Really Paid Like Bureaucrats?," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 113(3), pages 653-691.
    7. Kevin Stiroh, 2004. "Do Community Banks Benefit from Diversification?," Journal of Financial Services Research, Springer;Western Finance Association, vol. 25(2), pages 135-160, April.
    8. Chen, Carl R. & Steiner, Thomas L. & Whyte, Ann Marie, 2006. "Does stock option-based executive compensation induce risk-taking? An analysis of the banking industry," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 30(3), pages 915-945, March.
    9. Hamid Mehran & Joshua V. Rosenberg, 2007. "The effect of employee stock options on bank investment choice, borrowing, and capital," Staff Reports 305, Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
    10. Crawford, Anthony J & Ezzell, John R & Miles, James A, 1995. "Bank CEO Pay-Performance Relations and the Effects of Deregulation," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 68(2), pages 231-256, April.
    11. Robert DeYoung & Tara Rice, 2004. "Noninterest Income and Financial Performance at U.S. Commercial Banks," The Financial Review, Eastern Finance Association, vol. 39(1), pages 101-127, February.
    12. Rossi, Clifford V., 1998. "Mortgage Banking Cost Structure: Resolving an Enigma," Journal of Economics and Business, Elsevier, vol. 50(2), pages 219-234, March.
    13. Jensen, Michael C & Murphy, Kevin J, 1990. "Performance Pay and Top-Management Incentives," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 98(2), pages 225-264, April.
    14. John Core & Wayne Guay, 2002. "Estimating the Value of Employee Stock Option Portfolios and Their Sensitivities to Price and Volatility," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 40(3), pages 613-630, June.
    15. Houston, Joel F. & James, Christopher, 1995. "CEO compensation and bank risk Is compensation in banking structured to promote risk taking?," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 36(2), pages 405-431, November.
    16. Coles, Jeffrey L. & Daniel, Naveen D. & Naveen, Lalitha, 2006. "Managerial incentives and risk-taking," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 79(2), pages 431-468, February.
    17. Rogers, Daniel A., 2002. "Does executive portfolio structure affect risk management? CEO risk-taking incentives and corporate derivatives usage," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 26(2-3), pages 271-295, March.
    18. Kevin Stiroh, 2006. "New Evidence on the Determinants of Bank Risk," Journal of Financial Services Research, Springer;Western Finance Association, vol. 30(3), pages 237-263, December.
    19. Robert DeYoung & Emma Y. Peng & Meng Yan, 2010. "Executive compensation and business policy choices at U.S. commercial banks," Research Working Paper RWP 10-02, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Hagendorff, Jens & Vallascas, Francesco, 2011. "CEO pay incentives and risk-taking: Evidence from bank acquisitions," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 17(4), pages 1078-1095, September.
    2. Abascal, Ramón & González, Francisco, 2019. "Shareholder protection and bank executive compensation after the global financial crisis," Journal of Financial Stability, Elsevier, vol. 40(C), pages 15-37.
    3. Bai, Gang & Elyasiani, Elyas, 2013. "Bank stability and managerial compensation," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 37(3), pages 799-813.
    4. Mónica López-Puertas Lamy, 2012. "How does Ownership Structure Influence Bank Risk? Analyzing the Role of Managerial Incentives," Working Papers 1208, Departament Empresa, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, revised Nov 2012.
    5. Timothy King & Jonathan Williams, 2013. "Bank Efficiency and Executive Compensation," Working Papers 13009, Bangor Business School, Prifysgol Bangor University (Cymru / Wales).
    6. Lin Guo & Abu Jalal & Shahriar Khaksari, 2015. "Bank executive compensation structure, risk taking and the financial crisis," Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, Springer, vol. 45(3), pages 609-639, October.
    7. Fahlenbrach, Rüdiger & Stulz, René M., 2011. "Bank CEO incentives and the credit crisis," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 99(1), pages 11-26, January.
    8. Abascal, Ramón & González, Francisco, 2023. "What drives risk-taking incentives embedded in bank executive compensation? Some international evidence," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 79(C).
    9. Dragan Ilić & Sonja Pisarov & Peter S. Schmidt, 2019. "Preaching water but drinking wine? Relative performance evaluation in international banking," Swiss Journal of Economics and Statistics, Springer;Swiss Society of Economics and Statistics, vol. 155(1), pages 1-25, December.
    10. Gande, Amar & Kalpathy, Swaminathan, 2017. "CEO compensation and risk-taking at financial firms: Evidence from U.S. federal loan assistance," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 47(C), pages 131-150.
    11. Jens Hagendorff & Francesco Vallascas, 2012. "CEO Pay and Risk-taking in Banking: The Roles of Bonus Plans and Deferred Compensation in Curbing Bank Risk-taking," Chapters, in: James R. Barth & Chen Lin & Clas Wihlborg (ed.), Research Handbook on International Banking and Governance, chapter 9, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    12. Rym Ayadi & Emrah Arbak & Willem Pieter De Groen, 2012. "Executive Compensation and Risk-taking in European Banking," Chapters, in: James R. Barth & Chen Lin & Clas Wihlborg (ed.), Research Handbook on International Banking and Governance, chapter 8, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    13. Ongena, Steven & Savaşer, Tanseli & Şişli Ciamarra, Elif, 2022. "CEO incentives and bank risk over the business cycle," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 138(C).
    14. Stavros Kourtzidis & Nickolaos G. Tzeremes, 2019. "Investigating the determinants of firm performance," European Journal of Management and Business Economics, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 29(1), pages 3-22, June.
    15. Ahmed, Shaker & Ranta, Mikko & Vähämaa, Emilia & Vähämaa, Sami, 2023. "Facial attractiveness and CEO compensation: Evidence from the banking industry," Journal of Economics and Business, Elsevier, vol. 123(C).
    16. Carola Frydman & Dirk Jenter, 2010. "CEO Compensation," Annual Review of Financial Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 2(1), pages 75-102, December.
    17. James, Hui & Benson, Bradley W. & Wu, Chen (Ken), 2017. "Does CEO ownership affect payout policy? Evidence from using CEO scaled wealth-performance sensitivity," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 65(C), pages 328-345.
    18. Westman, Hanna, 2011. "The impact of management and board ownership on profitability in banks with different strategies," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 35(12), pages 3300-3318.
    19. Haykel Zouaoui & Faten Zoghlami, 2023. "What do we know about the impact of income diversification on bank performance? A systematic literature review," Journal of Banking Regulation, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 24(3), pages 286-309, September.
    20. Guay, Wayne R. & Kepler, John D. & Tsui, David, 2019. "The role of executive cash bonuses in providing individual and team incentives," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 133(2), pages 441-471.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Executive compensations; Deregulation; Financial crisis;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • G21 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - Banks; Other Depository Institutions; Micro Finance Institutions; Mortgages

    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:eee:quaeco:v:64:y:2017:i:c:p:238-248. 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: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/inca/620167 .

    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.