EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

Who did it matters: Executive equity compensation and financial reporting fraud

Robert H. Davidson

Journal of Accounting and Economics, 2022, vol. 73, issue 2

Abstract: In within-firm analysis of 1,805 executives, executives implicated in financial reporting fraud cases have significantly stronger equity incentives than their within-firm peers who are not implicated in the fraud. Executives implicated in fraud cases also have significantly stronger equity incentives than executives at non-fraud firms in similar roles. However, the equity incentives of non-implicated executives at fraud firms are no different than those for executives at non-fraud firms. The results are significant across executive roles and for equity incentives measured as wealth sensitivity to changes in stock price or stock price volatility. Executive-level analysis that considers which executives are implicated in the fraud may provide more precise measurement of the association and statistical significance of the relationship between equity incentives and fraud. Finally, firm-level measures that consider the equity incentives of all members of the top management team may better identify fraud firms than do measures focusing on one executive.

Keywords: Financial reporting fraud; Equity compensation; Executive equity incentives (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: G30 G34 G38 G39 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0165410121000689
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jaecon:v:73:y:2022:i:2:s0165410121000689

DOI: 10.1016/j.jacceco.2021.101453

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Accounting and Economics is currently edited by J. L. Zimmerman, S. P. Kothari, T. Z. Lys and R. L. Watts

More articles in Journal of Accounting and Economics from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().

 
Page updated 2025-03-19
Handle: RePEc:eee:jaecon:v:73:y:2022:i:2:s0165410121000689