This paper investigates the supervisory incentive effects of employee stock ownership plans based on a corporate risk-taking perspective using data from a sample of Chinese A-share listed companies from 2006-2021. The results show that employee stock ownership plans significantly enhance corporate risk-taking. The specific mechanism is that employee stock ownership plans reduce the two-tier agency costs between shareholders and managers and managers and employees, alleviate corporate financing constraints, and thus enhance the level of corporate risk-taking. It is also found that employee stock ownership plan enhances the level of corporate risktaking with high quality, because employee stock ownership plan not only promotes R&D investment which is beneficial to corporate value growth, but also reduces excessive investment and high debt which are detrimental to corporate value, and the corporate risk-taking is of higher quality and more substantial value effect. In addition, differences in the institutional design of employee stock ownership plans have different effects on corporate risk-taking: employee stock ownership plans that are leveraged, highly discounted, with longer lock-up periods and duration, and entrusted to third-party institutions have a stronger effect on corporate risk-taking; employee subscriptions can promote corporate risk-taking more than executive subscriptions; employee stock ownership plans in China do not have the problem of "free-riding There is no "free-rider" problem in China's employee stock ownership plan. The larger the issuance ratio of the employee stock ownership plan, the greater the number of participants, and the larger the scale of capital, the better the implementation effect.

员工持股制度（ESOP - Employee Stock Ownership Plan）起源于美国，是指在某特定的时期内，以某种约定的方式使公司经营管理者或普通员工得到该公司一定量的股份，使经营者或员工的角色发生转变，由单纯的代理方转向管理者和所有者的双重职能，从而使其更加尽职尽责，达到激励公司雇员而取得公司利益最大化的目的。 本文主要针对该种制度在中国的实践和理论状况做一探讨。