We ask whether the quality of internal information matters for investment decisions. We predict that investment is more sensitive to internal profit signals and less sensitive to external price signals when managers have higher quality internal information. Consistent with recent theoretical and...

We consider a setting where a firm delegates an investment decision and, subsequently, a sales decision to a privately informed manager. For both decisions corporate income taxes have real effects. We show that compensating the manager based on pre-tax residual income can ensure after-tax...

Although an organization's environmental uncertainty may induce greater variability in reported earnings, managers have incentives to reduce this variability. The flexibility accorded by Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) provides managers the means to accomplish this via exercising...

This paper develops a multiperiod principal-agent model in which a manager must be given incentives to undertake investments and to exert personally costly effort. Investments are soft (e.g., intangible assets) and therefore entail measurement errors for the accounting system as it seeks to...

Accounting measurements of firms' investments are usually imprecise. We study the economic consequences of such imprecision in a setting where accounting imprecision interacts with information asymmetry regarding the ex ante profitability of the project that is privately known by the firm's...

The use of fixed capital budgets is an empirically well-documented phenomenon in business practice. Whensoever some profitable investment opportunities cannot be realized, managers have to make investment decisions between mutually exclusive investment opportunities. In a multiperiod agency...

The paper studies incentive effects of accruals used for performance measurement in short-term contracts, if an agent undertakes activities with long-term and short-term consequences. The paper characterizes the optimal depreciation method and shows that it is not consistent with the traditional...

This paper examines a multiperiod principal-agent model in which a divisional manager has superior information regarding the profitability of an investment project available to his division. The manager also contributes to the periodic operating cash flows of his division through personally...

Prior evidence that higher quality financial reporting improves capital investment efficiency leaves unaddressed whether it reduces over- or under-investment. This study provides evidence of both in documenting a conditional negative (positive) association between financial reporting quality and...

This paper studies how industry peers respond when another firm in the industry is the subject of a hostile takeover attempt. We document two major responses. First, the industry peers cut their capital spending, free cash flows, and cash holdings, and increase their leverage and payouts to...