During the last decade, a surprisingly high percentage of U.S. companies has fulfilled or beatenanalysts´ earnings per share forecasts. One of the most frequently cited reasons for this growingtendency is a change in the nature of U.S. executive compensation structure. As stock options...

Performance fees for portfolio managers are designed to align the managers' goals withthose of the investors and to motivate managers to aquire "superior" information and tomake better investment decisions. A part of the literature analyzes performance fees on thebasis of market valuation. In...

This paper addresses the question, what metrics should be used for performance evaluationand in particular how they should be weighted and combined in the presence oftechnological interdependencies when the agents exhibit variedly strong developed rivalry.1 It is further examined, whether the...

Incentives often fail in inducing economic agents to engage in a desirableactivity; implementability is restricted. What restricts implementability?When does re-organization help to overcome this restriction?This paper shows that any restriction of implementabilityis caused by an identification...

We study the effects of envy on the feasibility of relational contracts in a standard moral hazard setup with two agents. Performance is evaluated via an observable, but non-contractible signal which reflects the agent's individual contribution to form value. Both agents exhibit disadvantageous...

We analyze the optimal combination of promotion tournaments and individualperformance pay in an employment relationship. An agent's effort is non-observable and he has private information about his suitability for promotion. We find thatthe principal does not provide individual incentives if it...

When designing incentives for a manager, the trade-off between insuranceand a “good” allocation of effort across various tasks is oftenidentified with a trade-off between the responsiveness (sensitivity, precision,signal-noise ratio) of the performance measure and its similarity(congruity,...

We examine the coexistence of banks and financial markets, studyinga credit market where the qualities of investment projects are notobservable and the investment decisions of entrepreneurs are not contractible...

In der Literatur zur Abschlußprüfung ist ein negativer Effekt eines ökonomischen Vorteils aus der wiederholten Mandatsannahme, der aufgrund von Transaktionskosten entsteht, auf die Unabhängigkeit des Abschlußprüfers diskutiert worden. Anders als die bisher vorgestellten Ansätze wird im...

During the last years the relationship between financial development and economic growth has received widespread attention in the literature on growth and development. This paper summarises in its first part the results of this research, stressing the growth-enhancing effects of an increased...