Portfolio theory must address the fact that, in reality, portfolio managers are evaluated relative to a benchmark, and therefore adopt risk management practices to account for the benchmark performance. We capture this risk management consideration by allowing a prespecified shortfall from a...

Empirical evidence suggests that the distribution of earnings reports exhibits kinks. Managers manage earnings as if to meet exogenously pre-specified targets, such as avoiding losses and avoiding a decrease in earnings. This is puzzling because the compensation to managers at these...

I characterize the effects of empirically observed managerial incentives on long-run oligopolistic competition. When managers have a preference for smooth time-paths of profits – as revealed by the empirical literature on ‘income smoothing’ – manager-led firms can sustain collusive...

Investors are keenly interested in financial reports of earnings because earnings provide important information for investment decisions. Thus, executives who are monitored by investors and directors face strong incentives to manage earnings. We introduce consideration of...

The collapse of the CMEA completed the Hungarian trade reorientation during the second half of the 1980s. Panel model estimations of trade reorientation reveal that cost efficiency, export subsidy and foreign demand played important and varying roles between 1981 and 1990. During the last two...

The increase in female employment and participation rates is one of the most dramatic economic changes to have taken place during the last century. However, while the employment rate of married women more than doubled during the last fifty years, that of unmarried women remained almost constant....

This Paper develops an account of the role and significance of managerial power and rent extraction in executive compensation. Under the optimal contracting approach to executive compensation, which has dominated academic research on the subject, pay arrangements are set by a board of directors...