We study the effects of peer pressure on the incentives of riskaverse agents. We define the peer pressure function and then assume that each agent feels peer pressure not only when his effort level is below the standard level, but also when it is above that level. We also suppose that agents are...

This paper examines the relationship between the level of Japanese business managers' compensation and the quality of corporate governance, and whether weaker governance structures lead to poorer future performance. The conclusions of this paper are as follows. First, the level of Japanese...

We analyze the effect of peer pressure on the incentives offered by a principal, supposing that there are two agents who make costly efforts to produce a single output. The agents are rewarded by the principal, contingent on the realized output. In addition to this pecuniary payoff, we consider...

This paper investigates the interactions between preemptive competition and leverage. We find that the second mover always leaves the duopoly market before the first mover, although the leader may exit before the followerfs entry. We also see the leverage effects of debt financing increasing...

We develop a dynamic model in which a firm exercises an option to expand production with cash balance and costly external funds. While related papers explain their results only by numerical examples, we analytically prove the following results. In the presence of only a proportional cost of...

This paper investigates a principal-agent model in which an owner (principal) optimizes a contract with a manager (agent) delegated to undertake an investment project. In the model, we explore the effects of costly exploration by which the manager learns the real value of development cost. We...

We develop a real options model for evaluating and optimizing an R&D project. The model can capture key features of R&D, including research duration, growth opportunity, debt financing, and uncertainty of technological, demand market, and rival preemption. Nevertheless, it is computationally...

We develop a dynamic model in which a firm exercises an option to expand production on either a small or large scale with cash reserves and costly external funds. We show that the financing costs greatly distort the firmfs financing and investment behavior and result in a policy contingent on...

Based on the investment theory of Abel and Eberly (1994), we develop an analytical model of adjustment costs, which produces a sigmoidal investment function. We also estimate the piecewise linear investment function, which includes as special cases linear models, models with one threshold, the...

The literature maintains the statistical significance of cash flow in the investment equation. One criticism against the financing constraint interpretation of cash flow is that cash flow may be picking up information on the future profitability of a firm which Tobinfs Q fails to capture. We...