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The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between stock options compensation and firm strategic risk-taking, employing a quantile regression (QR) model. This study aims to analyze whether the impact of stock options on firm strategic risk-taking changes across various quantiles and investigates the moderating role of firm performance.

This study is based on a sample of 90 French firms for the period extending from 2008 to 2019. To deal with the non-uniform association, the authors use a panel quantile method.

The results reveal that the impact of chief executive officer (CEO) stock options on firm strategic risk-taking varies across risk-taking quantiles. More specifically, the study’s results show a positive association at low quantile levels of strategic risk-taking, measured by research and development (R&D) and a negative linkage at high levels. The authors also find that firm performance moderates the impact of CEO stock options on strategic risk-taking.

The non-uniform relationship between CEO stock options and firm strategic risk-taking shows that the weight of CEO stock options in the total compensation can be a major determinant of the firm's strategic risk-taking attitude.

This study extends existing research on executive compensation and strategic risk-taking. Thus, this study has the potential to help stakeholders, board of directors and regulators, who are attempting to understand how the compensation contract – in particular, stock option pay – is related to the risk behavior of the agents and guide them to structure the executive compensation in an optimal way.