CEO Severance Pay and Corporate Tax Planning
研究发现CEO离职补偿与企业税务筹划正相关，离职补偿通过缓解经理人职业担忧，促使风险规避型经理人增加税务筹划活动，且对经验不足、受股东监督强或公司波动大的经理人效果更显著。
ABSTRACT We examine the association between CEO severance pay (i.e., payment a CEO would receive if s/he is involuntarily terminated) and corporate tax planning activities. We find that CEO severance pay is positively associated with corporate tax planning, consistent with CEO severance pay providing contractual protection against managers' career concerns and thereby inducing otherwise risk-averse managers to engage in incremental levels of tax planning. This result holds under an instrumental variable approach and propensity score matching, and survives alternative measures of CEO severance pay and corporate tax planning. Finally, we find that severance pay provides stronger tax planning incentives in situations where managers are expected to face greater career concerns—when they are less experienced, when they face stronger shareholder monitoring, and when they manage firms with higher idiosyncratic volatility. Overall, our results suggest that CEO severance pay represents a form of efficient contracting with otherwise risk-averse managers.