Managerial Ability, Managerial Incentives and Firm Performance: Empirical Evidence from Vietnam

This study investigates the impact of managerial ability and managerial incentives on firm performance. In particular, it studies how managerial ability factor can exert significant influence on the profitability and the risk of firms. By doing this, the study can provide several policy implications about how managerial ability can influence firm decisions and its corresponding business policies. Data of the study was collected from the Annual Enterprises Survey (AES), which is conducted by the General Statistics Office of Vietnam (GSO) during the 2009-2013 period. After removing firms with insufficient financial information, our final dataset includes over 50,000 firms in Vietnam. The main result of the study shows that there is a significant and positive relationship between managerial ability and firm leverage. This finding indicates that managerial ability significantly plays an important role in making financial decisions. In addition, our study provides empirical evidence about the causal relationship between managerial compensation and firm risk-taking behavior. Specifically, we find that firm risks are significantly associated with compensation schemes including lower delta and higher vega. In other words, our study implies that the sensitivity of CEO wealth to stock volatility can positively affect both delta and vega or managerial incentives schemes.