Tax Costs and Nontax Benefits: The Case of Incentive Stock Options.
研究了1986年税改后，尽管发行激励性股票期权（ISOs）有税收成本，但一些公司仍继续发行，原因在于这些公司投资机会多，需要靠ISOs绑定员工，同时也会用养老金和工资递延等低成本方式。
Abstract The Tax Reform Act of 1986 (TRA86), by causing the highest corporate tax rate for corporations to be higher than the highest individual rate, gave corporations a tax incentive to issue Nonqualified Stock Options as opposed to incentive Stock Options (ISOs). Nevertheless, some firms continue to issue new ISOs, despite the tax cost of doing so. We hypothesize that firms with the greatest investment opportunity sets are most likely to issue ISOs in order to tie employees to the firm. Our empirical. results are consistent with this hypothesis. We also show that these firms also use other, less costly mechanisms, such as pension plans and salary deferrals to tie their employees. Consistent with the tax incentive hypothesis, fewer firms In our sample issued ISOs after TRA86 than before.