Evidence contrasting insider trades in the U.S. between high- and low- jeopardy periods and across firms at high and low risk for 10b-5 litigation indicates insiders condition their trades on foreknowledge of price-relevant public disclosures, but avoid profitable trades when jeopardy due to...

We examine the relationship between the optimal incentive contract and the firm’s decision to fire a manager for poor performance. We first derive some theoretical results using a simple principal-agent model, and then examine the empirical evidence on the incidence of forced turnover among...

In most countries, banks’ equity holdings in firms that borrow from then are rather small. In light of the theoretical literature, this is somewhat surprising. For example, according to agency cost models, allowing banks to hold equity would seem to alleviate firms’ asset substitution moral...

Using an econometric procedure that corrects for both self-selection of individuals into their preferred compensation scheme and wage endogeneity, this study investigates whether significant differences exist in the job satisfaction of individuals receiving performance- related pay (PRP)...

Agency costs are a cost of production, and firms that do a better job of minimizing these costs should exhibit better performance. This paper tests this hypothesis by calculating the performance elasticity of average employee hourly compensation for U.S. manufacturing firms. This elasticity...

The rent-sharing literature and the agency literature both predict a link between pay and performance. The rent-sharing literature relies on short-term market power to explain this link, and the agency literature bases its prediction on the importance of incentives in principal-agent...

The existing debate about policies designed to foster the development of a stakeholder economy have largely avoided a fundamental question. How large is the financial stake employees currently hold in their companies? This paper addresses this question using data from the Datastream database,...

This paper evaluates the intensity of the value-maximization incentives for average employees generated through wage, salary, and bonus mechanisms. This is accomplished through estimation of the elasticity of average employee hourly compensation with respect to changes in firm performance. This...

According to empirical evidence, extrinsic incentives often crowd out intrinsic motivation, thus reducing the effort choices of workers. This article presents a simple model illustrating how the introduction of monetary incentives causes a discontinuous reduction in worker effort as well as a...

The problem of coordination failure, particularly in 'team production' situations, is central to a large number of mircroeconomic as well as macroeconomic models. As this type of inefficient coordination poses a severe economic problem, there is a need for institutions that foster efficient...