Equity compensation and the sensitivity of research and development to financial market frictions

O’Connor, Matthew, Matthew Rafferty and Aamer Sheikh

Journal of Banking & Finance, 2013, vol. 37, issue 7, 2510-2519

Abstract: When financial market frictions exist, executives may have to decide which investment activities to reduce when internal funds decrease. Expenditures on research and development (R&D) may be particularly vulnerable because of the long-term nature of innovative activity. We find that equity compensation is associated with lower levels of firm R&D expenditures. Rewarding executives to incur more risk has little effect on R&D expenditures, but rewarding executives for higher returns reduces R&D expenditures and makes R&D expenditures more sensitive to financial market frictions. In contrast, cash compensation reduces the sensitivity of R&D expenditures to financial market frictions.

Keywords: Equity compensation; Financial constraints; Research and development (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: G3 O3 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378426613000800
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jbfina:v:37:y:2013:i:7:p:2510-2519

DOI: 10.1016/j.jbankfin.2013.02.005

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Banking & Finance is currently edited by Ike Mathur

More articles in Journal of Banking & Finance from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().