Baker (2002) has demonstrated theoretically that the quality of performance measures used in compensation contracts hinges on two characteristics: noise and distortion. These criteria, though, will only be useful in practice as long as the noise and distortion of a performance measure can be...

This study examines whether the CEO uses share repurchases to sell her equity grants at inflated stock prices, a concern regularly voiced in politics and media. We find that the timing of buyback programs and equity compensation, i.e., the granting, vesting, and selling of equity, is largely...

Economists and financial analysts have begun to recognise the importance of the actions of other agents in the decision-making process. Herding is the deliberate mimicking of the decisions of other agents. Examples of mimicry range from the choice of restaurant, fashion and financial market...

In response to technological change, U.S. corporations have been investing more in intangible capital. This transformation is empirically associated with lower leverage and greater cash holdings, and commonly explained as a precautionary response to reduced debt capacity. We model how firms'...

Distorted performance measures in compensation contracts elicit suboptimal behavioral responses that may even prove to be dysfunctional (gaming). This paper applies the empirical test developed by Courty and Marschke (2008) to detect whether the widely used class of Residual Income based...

Distorted performance measures in compensation contracts elicit suboptimal behavioral responses that may even prove to be dysfunctional (gaming). This paper applies the empirical test developed by Courty and Marschke (2008) to detect whether the widely used class of Residual Income based...

Little is known about perceptions of medical expenditure risks despite their presumed relevance to health insurance demand. This paper reports on a unique elicitation of subjective probabilities of medical expenditures from rural Ethiopians who are offered the opportunity to purchase health...

A common assumption in the analysis of symmetric auctions is that the bidders' value estimates exhibit positive informational externalities (PIE). This assumption implies upward drifting price sequences at sequential auctions, which is challenged by an empirical regularity, known as the...

At the start of their term, politicians often announce which issue they intend to address. To shed light on this agenda setting, we develop a model in which a politician has to decide whether or not to address a public issue. Addressing an issue means that the politician investigates the issue...

We analyze the reporting strategies of firms and the investigation strategies of auditors in an archetype principles-based financial reporting system. To this end, we add a verification stage to a standard cheap-talk game, and apply the resulting game to financial reporting. We show that for a...