Abstract: Through studying the characteristics, motivations and market effects of the companies which carry out the Employee Stock Ownership Plans (ESOPs), this paper finds out that such plan can satisfy the motivation of “signal transmission” and “financing restriction”, namely, the companies with strong profitability and seriously under-estimated share prices can have larger probability to carry out the ESOPs, while companies with higher level of financing constraints are more inclined to carry out the ESOPs in the manner of non-public offering. The findings also show that there is a significant positive correlation between the listed companies carrying out the ESOPs and their performances. Meanwhile, the announcement of ESOPs has a significant positive share-price effect, but the market would make relatively lower evaluation on the plans which use higher leverage. The conclusions of this study have provided references and suggestions for the improvement of the incentive and restraint mechanism of ESOPs and the supervision of the capital market.

Key words: ESOPs; employee motivation; financing constraint; implementation effects