Do Nonexecutive Employees Have Valuable Information? Evidence from Employee Stock Purchase Plans
利用员工股票购买计划数据，发现低层员工集体购买公司股票能预测未来股票回报，且在高信息不对称公司中更显著，支持员工掌握公司未来业绩信息的假设。
Using novel data on employee stock purchase plans (ESPPs), we show that aggregate purchases of company stock by lower-level employees predict future stock returns. Firms in the top quartile of ESPP purchases outperform those in the bottom quartile by 10% in the year after purchase. The relation between ESPP purchases and future stock returns is stronger for firms with high information asymmetry. Furthermore, we find that high ESPP purchases are associated with a lower likelihood of breaks in strings of consecutive earnings increases, as well as higher future sales growth and more innovation. These findings support the hypothesis that lower-level employees have information about future firm performance. We examine and reject a number of alternative explanations. Our results have implications for firms using employees as a source of capital, accounting issues related to expensing of equity-based compensation, and disclosure policy. Data, as supplemental material, are available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2015.2226 . This paper was accepted by Wei Jiang, finance.