HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access archive for the deposit and dissemination of scientific research documents, whether they are published or not. The documents may come from teaching and research institutions in France or abroad, or from public or private research centers. L'archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, émanant des établissements d'enseignement et de recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires publics ou privés.
Employee stock ownership (ESO) is often associated with reductions in agency costs because it increases employee satisfaction and attachment to their company and aligns the interests of employees with those of their firm. Another stream of research argues that ESO may have the opposite effect on agency costs because it serves as a management entrenchment tool and leads to divergence between stakeholders. This paper examines the relationship between ESO and agency costs in France, which is a leading European country for ESO. Using a panel database of 125 firms over the period 2002–2016, we find an inverted U-shaped relationship between ESO and agency costs. That evidence highlights that low levels of ESO increase agency costs, which is consistent with managerial entrenchment mechanisms. The findings also suggest that beyond a certain point, ESO reduces agency problems because it links employee wealth to their firm’s success.
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