Corporate Tax-Planning Effectiveness: The Role of Compensation-Based Incentives
研究用税后业绩指标给业务单元经理发薪酬，是否会让公司有效税率更低。基于调查数据，用两步法纠正内生性后发现，对业务单元经理（而非CEO）用税后指标确实能降低有效税率。
This study investigates whether compensating chief executive officers and business-unit managers using after-tax accounting-based performance measures leads to lower effective tax rates, the empirical surrogate used for tax-planning effectiveness. Utilizing proprietary compensation data obtained in a survey of corporate executives, the relation between effective tax rates and after-tax performance measures is modeled and estimated using a two-step approach that corrects for the endogeneity bias associated with firms' decisions to compensate managers on a pre- versus after-tax basis. The results are consistent with the hypothesis that compensating business-unit managers, but not chief executive officers, on an after-tax basis leads to lower effective tax rates.