In this paper, we study a setting where a firm (principal) is privately informed of the firm's potential and contracts with an agent to supply unobservable effort. We show it can be optimal for the firm to have loose monitoring in the sense that the monitoring system is less perfect than what is...

This paper studies the role of observable accounting biases in alleviating rational yet dysfunctional unobservable earnings manipulation. We regard accounting numbers as serving two important roles: the valuation role in which potential investors use accounting reports to assess a firm's...

This paper studies the role of conservative accounting standards in alleviating rational yet dysfunctional unobservable earnings manipulation. We show that when accounting numbers serve both the valuation role (in which potential investors use accounting reports to assess a firm's expected...

This paper examines the decision to exercise employee stock options (ESOs). Our results indicate a positive relation between the extent of quot;earlyquot; exercise and the unhedged risk of the option. Specifically we document a positive relation between the variance of ESO returns and the extent...

This paper examines the decision to exercise employee stock options (ESOs). Our results indicate a positive relation between the extent of quot;earlyquot; exercise and the unhedged risk of the option. Specifically we document a positive relation between the variance of ESO returns and the extent...

We examine the interaction between two forms of hospital regulation and their effect on hospital behavior. Because reimbursement under federal Medicare regulation is a fixed fee per diagnosis, hospitals are encouraged to behave more like cost centers and reduce cost through shorter average...

In this paper, I study how to best assign responsibilities and design reward structures to take advantage of available information for a two-stage production process. Two alternative assignments compete. One resembles the American style push assignment where the responsibility for initiating...

<heading id="h1" level="1" implicit="yes" format="display">ABSTRACT</heading>This paper studies the role of conservative accounting standards in alleviating rational yet dysfunctional unobservable earnings manipulation. We show that when accounting numbers serve both the valuation role (in which potential investors use accounting reports to assess a firm's...

At first glance, executive stock options with reload provisions appear to be more complicated than conventional options, and thus the valuation of such options would appear to be more difficult. But, as the authors demonstrate in this article, such reload options provide the employee with a...