內部董事超額薪酬和公司未來績效-隱性合約觀點之實證研究

An Empirical Analysis of the Relation between Inside Director’s Excess Compensation and Firm’s Future Performance: Implicit Contract Perspective

戴怡蕙(Yi-Hui Tai)

指導教授 ： 柯承恩

共同指導教授 ： 曾智揚

國立臺灣大學/管理學院/會計學研究所/博士(2012年)

https://doi.org/10.6342/NTU.2012.00598

摘要

本文主旨在探討內部董事超額薪酬與公司未來績效的關連性，而本文以內部董事超額薪酬為研究對象，理由有三：第一，外部董事大多只領取固定金額的車馬費，且其角色僅為董事會成員，和經理人勾結的機率較低，所以其薪酬較少受到質疑。第二，內部董事同時領取董事及經理人薪酬，相較於選擇高階經理人為研究對象，可同時分析超額薪酬與未來績效間的關連性是否會因為職務不同而有所不同。第三，過去公司治理文獻並無著墨在內部董事的超額薪酬與公司未來績效之關連性。因此本文將年報上所揭露的內部董事薪酬，區分為董事身份及經理人身份的薪酬，並藉由迴歸分析方式，以分別了解總超額薪酬與董事及經理人這兩種身份之超額薪酬與公司未來績效的關連性。
過去文獻對於超額薪酬的意涵存在二種不同看法，分別為：自肥觀點及隱性合約觀點。其中自肥觀點認為超額薪酬的存在是代理人利用與主理人之間的資訊不對稱所產生的投機行為；而隱性合約(Implicit Contract)觀點則認為當期薪酬除了考量對公司外部人而言可公開觀察到(Observable)的當期績效指標外，還包含公司外部人無法觀察到(Unobservable)的當期績效指標，且外部人無法觀察到(Unobservable)的當期績效指標和公司未來績效相關，因此無法被現在薪酬解釋的變異(超額薪酬)與公司未來績效間存在正相關性。除此之外，本研究認為即使內部董事領有超額薪酬，且未來績效也無顯著成長，但有可能是因為其他不可控因素影響，所以無法直接證明此項超額薪酬是因為內部董事本身的自肥行為所造成。因此本研究以隱性合約觀點為假說推論基礎。
再者，本文定義「超額薪酬」就是未能由本期可以公開觀察到(Observable)的財務與市場績效指標所解釋的薪酬變異，亦即公司外部人無法觀察到(Unobservable)的當期績效指標所代表的薪酬。並且本文對於超額薪酬的計算，係以實際薪酬減去應領薪酬，而本文在應領薪酬的衡量上，先彙整代理理論文獻有關代理人的薪酬決定方式，再以主理人能夠公開觀察到(Observable)的績效資訊來估計代理人之應領薪酬。首先，薪酬合約應為績效的遞增函數，但若某績效衡量指標的雜訊越高，則該指標用來衡量績效時所佔的權重就應該越低。文獻中曾以不確定性來衡量績效指標的雜訊高低，而本文則進一步將不確定性區分為複雜度及風險兩個構面。因此，本文將內部董事之應領薪酬定義為以下因素所組成的函數：(1)績效、(2)複雜度及(3)風險。
最後本文實證結果顯示不論是以下一期Tobin’s Q(Qt+1)，或是下兩期Tobin’s Q(Qt+2)作為未來績效指標，亦或是僅以非電子產業公司為研究樣本，內部董事的總超額薪酬及董事身份超額薪酬都和公司未來績效具顯著正相關性，換言之實證結果支持隱性合約觀點。然而，不論是以下一期Tobin’s Q(Qt+1)，或是下兩期Tobin’s Q(Qt+2)，或是資產報酬率(ROAt+1)作為未來績效指標，內部董事的經理人身份超額薪酬和公司未來績效都不具顯著正相關性。除此之外，在董事長兼任總經理的公司，其內部董事的董事身份超額薪酬和公司未來績效間也不具顯著負相關性。

關鍵字

內部董事 ； 超額薪酬 ； 公司績效 ； 隱性合約 ； 董事長兼任總經理

並列摘要

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relation between inside director’s excess compensation and firm’s future performance. This paper takes the "inside director" as the research subject due to the following concerns. Firstly, the compensation of the outside director is usually only travel allowances and his chance to collude with the manager is lower. Moreover, comparing to simply taking the high-level manager as the research subject, we can learn more due to the duality of inside director. Finally, few prior papers study the relation between inside director’s excess compensation and firm’s future performance. Therefore, the firm’s future performance is expressed as a function of the two excess compensations as derived from the inside director’s respective roles of director and executive. Besides that, this paper also tests the relation between total excess compensation and firm’s future performance.
The excess compensation’s relation to the firm’s future performance has been explained in the literature based on the two perspectives: cronyism versus implicit contract theory. According to cronyism, it views the excess compensation as an agency problem that the agent exploits from the information asymmetry between principal and agent. To the contrary, implicit contract theory argues that if corporate boards optimally use both observable and unobservable measures of performance and the unobservable measures are correlated with firm future performance, then unexplained variation in current compensation should predict future variation in firm performance. In addition, even if there exists excess compensation paid to inside director and no significant growth of firm future performance, it could be due to other factors than cronyism. Therefore, this study chooses implicit contract theory as the basis to develop hypotheses.
This study defines excess compensation as the compensation unexplained by current observable financial and market performance measures. In other words, the excess compensation means the compensation explained by unobservable performance measures and is the difference between the actual pay and the reasonable pay. The latter is determined by the outsiders who use public information to derive their view on inside director’s reasonable pay and this paper use agency theory to define the combination of reasonable pay. Firstly, the compensation for an agent shall be in accordance with the performance. Also, the weight allocated to the performance measures should have a negative correlation with the level of uncertainty, and this paper divided the uncertainty involved into two dimensions: complexity and risk. Here we defined reasonable compensation as the function with the following factor: (1) performance, (2) complexity, and (3) risk.
Empirical evidence shows that the inside director’s total excess compensation and the inside director’s excess compensation from director’s role are both positively related to the firm’s future performance as measured by the Tobin’s q of the first or second succeeding period. This result supports the view base on implicit contract theory. Also, the prior empirical result is supported by non-electronics companies. Nevertheless, empirical evidence shows that the inside director’s excess compensation from executive role is unrelated to the firm’s future performance as measured by the Tobin’s q of the first or second succeeding period or ROA of the succeeding period. Lastly, the inside director’s excess compensation from director’s role is not negatively related to the firm’s future performance in the firm with CEO duality.

並列關鍵字

Inside director ； Excess compensation ； Firm performance ； Implicit contract ； CEO Duality

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