To investigate how the possibility of earnings manipulation affects managerial compensation contracts, we study a two period agency setting in which a firm's manager can engage in "window dressing" activities to manipulate reported accounting earnings. Earnings manipulation boosts the reported...

This paper investigates the impact of earnings management on incentives and welfare in a two-period agency setting. Managerial performance measures are positively correlated because of a time-invariant productivity component that aff ects earnings in both periods. The firm and the manager learn...