Firm-level tournament incentives and corporate tax aggressiveness

Abstract

Theory and prior research suggests that tournament incentives promote greater risk-taking by senior executives in order to increase the likelihood of being promoted. In this study, we hypothesize and confirm that tournament incentives of the CFO are positively associated with measures of tax aggressiveness. We conduct numerous robustness tests, including instrumental variables estimation and firm fixed effects. Further, we find the effect of tournament incentives to be incremental to equity incentives. We conclude that tournament incentives have a meaningful impact on corporate tax aggressiveness.