We argue that relative performance evaluation (RPE) contracts introduce a tournament among the focal firm and peer firms. We test whether a firm's riskiness is altered by its CEO's incentive to win the tournament. We find that a firm that performed poorly relative to its peers during an interim period takes more risk in the remainder of the evaluation period than a firm with better interim performance. This effect is stronger when the interim assessment date is closer to the end of the evaluation period and when winning the competition is more important to the CEO. Together, our results suggest that RPE contracts create tournament incentives for CEOs and significantly affect corporate risk taking.

我们认为，相对绩效评估 (RPE) 合同引入了焦点公司和同行公司之间的竞赛。我们测试一家公司的风险是否会被其 CEO 赢得锦标赛的动机所改变。我们发现，在中期业绩相对于同行表现不佳的公司在评估期的剩余时间里比中期业绩较好的公司承担更大的风险。当中期评估日期更接近评估期结束并且赢得竞争对 CEO 来说更重要时，这种影响会更强。总之，我们的结果表明，RPE 合同为 CEO 创造了锦标赛激励，并显着影响了企业的风险承担。