北京大学国际法学院副教授Nitzan Shilon关于高管薪酬的研究近期刊登于哈佛法学院公司治理与金融监管论坛。
在此次的论文Replacing Executive Equity Compensation: The Case for Cash for Long-Term Performance中，基于长期绩效，Shilon教授重新思考了发放美国上市公司高管薪酬的方式。他认为权益薪酬不可取，而应详细制定“Cash-for-performance”激励计划。
以下是文章的摘要：
Paying top executives in equity (stock and stock options) is the most significant reform of executive compensation in our generation. It has been universally welcomed not only by firms but also by academics, investors, and policy makers. Contrary to the consensus, I argue that equity compensation is undesirable. It provides perverse incentives for managers to destroy shareholder value and behave manipulatively and recklessly. It is also an economically wasteful vehicle, and its wastefulness, which is exacerbated by agency costs and cognitive biases, significantly contributes to the immense explosion of executive compensation. Because of the inherent drawbacks of equity pay arrangements, I suggest a radical proposal: to instead use carefully designed cash-for-performance schemes in which executives are rewarded in cash for attaining certain long-term performance criteria. To facilitate this reform, I recommend implementing it systemically and placing tax and disclosure rules that are applied to equity incentive pay on a level playing field with rules that are applied to cash incentive remuneration. The reform is expected to eliminate the significant costs of equity compensation and make incentive pay more effective, transparent, cheap, and better tied to performance, while improving the limited incentive benefits generated by current equity compensation arrangements.
