The Dating Game: Do Managers Designate Option Grant Dates to Increase their Compensation?
发现管理者通过回溯或前瞻选择期权授予日期来增加薪酬，证据显示授予日前后股票收益与报告延迟正相关，且管理者能获得显著经济利益。
We provide evidence of two variants of a dating game that entails picking a grant date ex post, that is, after the board's compensation decision is made: back-dating (picking a date before the board decision date), and forward-dating (waiting after the board decision date to observe the stock price behavior). Consistent with back-dating, we find stock return behavior around the grant date to be positively related to reporting lag. In the promptly reported sample, we find stock return behavior and the pattern of reporting lags consistent with forward-dating. Our calculations show that managers can obtain economically significant benefits by playing the dating game. , Oxford University Press.