In the empirical estimation of the relation between CEO pay and both firm and peer performance, researchers typically include conventional accounting-based measures that reflect firm performance net of executive pay expense. We analytically show that when firms evaluate CEO performance relative...

We analyze a two-period agency problem with limited liability and non-verifiable information. The principal commits to a dynamic bonus pool comprising a fixed total payment that may be distributed over time to the agent and a third party. We find that the optimal two-period contract features...

Given a standard moral hazard problem, the agent's optimal compensation can be cast as a function of either (i) the gross outcome, or (ii) the net outcome, which is the gross outcome net of the agent's compensation. Contracts based on the net outcome are important in practice because (i)...