In agency theory, offering a flat salary contract under unobservable effort creates a moral hazard problem because the agent is motivated to shirk and provide less than a previously agreed-upon level of effort. We examine a moral solution to this moral hazard problem. In particular, we present a...

We study the feasibility and desirability of integrating ethics with traditional principal-agent theory. After discussing common objections and potential benefits, we present a principal-agent model that incorporates ethics in a manner that maintains the essential features of the traditional LEN...

We study the implications of introducing ethics into the traditional principal-agent model. In our model, the principal specifies a standard for effort at the time of contracting and the agent suffers a utility loss if he chooses not to provide the standard after agreeing to the contract. The...

We show that prices and incentives recommended by the salesforce literature when targeting a profitable segment can attract unprofitable customers, particularly when salespeople have high productivity and low risk (i.e., risk aversion times uncertainty). Therefore, when customers are...

Increasingly, firms are augmenting financial measures of performance with non-financial measures of performance with a view to instill a long-run focus and reduce managerial myopia. Thus, in this paper, we utilize an agency-theoretic model to examine closely how financial measures cause...

We show that prices and incentives recommended by the salesforce literature when targeting a profitable segment can attract unprofitable customers, particularly when salespeople have high productivity and low risk (i.e., risk aversion times uncertainty). Therefore, when customers are...

We study moral judgments regarding budgetary slack made by participants at the end of a participative budgeting experiment in which an expectation for a truthful budget was present. We find that participants who set budgets under a slack-inducing pay scheme, and therefore built relatively high...

Researchers have questioned whether individual differences in moral reasoning might partly account for the variation in auditor misreporting behavior documented in prior experimental-markets research in auditing. In the first experimental market study to directly test the relation between moral...

This paper reviews, synthesizes, and critiques the capital market literature examining trading volume around earnings announcements and other financial reports. Our purposes are to assess what we have learned from examining trading volume around these announcements and to suggest directions for...

Researchers in accounting and economics have established that financial controls can diminish intrinsic motivation in the subordinate when they are intentionally imposed by the superior. We study the ability of a non-financial control to generate a similar crowding out effect on honest reporting...