Equity Incentives and Internal Control Weaknesses
研究发现，股权激励（包括股票和期权）能促使管理层加强内部控制，从而降低重大缺陷出现的概率，且该效应在CFO身上比CEO更明显。
In this study, we examine whether the monetary incentives associated with equity ownership (broadly defined to include stock and stock options) induce managers to maintain strong internal controls. Supporting the notion that equity ownership provides management incentive to strengthen the company's internal controls we find that the likelihood of a material weakness in internal control decreases with increases in equity incentives. This result holds for both traditional regression analysis, as well as analysis conducted using propensity score matching. Further analysis suggests that these results are more closely related to company-level internal control problems, are more strongly associated with incentives provided by restricted equity, and are more highly correlated with CFO than CEO incentives.