Managers Pay Duration and Voluntary Disclosures

Given the adverse impact on their welfare, managers are reluctant to disclose bad news timely. In this paper, we examine the effect of managers’ pay duration on firms’ voluntary disclosures of bad news. Pay duration refers to the average period that it takes for managers’ annual compensation to vest. We hypothesize and find that pay durations can incentivize managers to provide more bad news earnings forecasts. This result holds after controlling for the endogeneity of pay duration. In addition, we find that the effect of pay duration is more pronounced for firms with weaker governance and for firms with poorer information environment, where the marginal benefits of additional disclosures are higher. We also find that such effects are stronger for firms facing lower litigation risks and for firms operating in more homogenous industries, where managers’ ex ante incentives to disclose bad news are particularly weak. Overall, our paper contributes to the literature by documenting that lengthening the vesting period of managers’ compensation can induce managers to be more forthcoming with bad news.