We show in a theoretical model that credit default swaps induce managerial agency problems through two channels: reducing the opportunity for managers to transfer value to equityholders from creditors via strategic default, and reducing the intensity of monitoring by creditors, which leads to...

The informativeness principle demonstrates qualitative benefits to increasing signal precision. However, it is difficult to quantify these benefits -- and compare them against the costs of precision -- since we typically cannot solve for the optimal contract and analyze how it changes with...

Tournaments, reward structures based on rank order, are compared with individual contracts in a model with one risk-neutral principal and many risk-averse agents. Each agents' output is a stochastic function of his effort level plus an additive shock term that is common to all the agents. The...

This paper identifies a class of multiperiod agency problems in which the optimal contract is tractable (attainable in closed form). By modeling the noise before the action in each period, we force the contract to provide sufficient incentives state-by-state, rather than merely on average. This...

This paper reviews the theoretical and empirical literature on executive compensation. We start by presenting data on the level of CEO and other top executive pay over time and across firms, the changing composition of pay; and the strength of executive incentives. We compare pay in U.S. public...

This article studies traditional and modern theories of executive compensation, bringing them together under a unifying framework. We analyze assignment models of the level of pay, and static and dynamic moral hazard models of incentives, and compare their predictions to empirical findings. We...

Some existing welfare programs ("work-first") require participants to work in exchange for benefits. Others ("job search-first") emphasize private job-search and provide assistance in finding and retaining a durable employment. This paper studies the optimal design of welfare programs when (i)...