We modify the principal-agent model with moral hazard by assuming that the agent is expectation-based loss averse according to Köszegi and Rabin (2006, 2007). The optimal contract is a binary payment scheme even for a rich performance measure, where standard preferences predict a fully...

Individuals have two possible channels through which to obtain a managerial position: external and internal promotions. Employing the revised German Employment Register, we compare external and internal promotions by using multinomial logit regressions while accounting for workplace...

We show that firms may benefit from allowing some earnings management, because it can make noisy signals more informative. We model a firm that cannot observe a manager's cost of effort, her effort choice, and whether she manipulated a publicly observable signal. An optimal contract links...

How much does firm intangibility amplify CEOs' persistent private information and reduce firms' public listing propensity? We develop a model of competing public and private investors financing firms heterogeneously exposed to persistent private cashflows. Equilibrium financing is driven by...

An essential ingredient in models of career concerns is ex ante uncertainty about an agent's type. This paper shows how career concerns can arise even in the absence of any such ex ante uncertainty, if the unobservable actions that an agent takes influence his future productivity. By...

This paper develops a model showing how the environmental liability regime and the precision of the disclosed environmental performance indicator (EPI) affect managers' incentives (1) to reduce actual pollution and (2) to manipulate the EPI. I assume a company with a separation of ownership and...

We examine how performance management practices that render employee accomplishments transparent in an organization depend on employees’ hierarchical level. We consider a principal-agent model of an organization where the principal contracts directly with a group of higher-level agent-workers...