Using car dealership data, we examine the relevance of forward-looking (FL) and contemporaneous (CO) measures for pay-for-performance incentives (bonus, annual raise, promotions) for long-horizon employees. Economic models suggest that while contracts with FL performance measures mitigates the...

Business executives and academics frequently criticize budget-based compensation plans as providing incentives for subordinates to build slack into proposed budgets. In this paper, we examine whether either of two practices - using budgets to allocate scarce resources, or providing information...

I study the consequences of a random exposure to common risk for the purpose of relative performance evaluation (RPE) and find that it significantly affects the usefulness and the empirical measurement of RPE. According to my analysis, the magnitude of the exposure risk not only determines how...

To address agents' moral hazard over effort, incentive contracts impose risk on the agents. As performance measures become noisier, the conventional agency analysis predicts that principals will reduce the incentive weights assigned to such measures. However, prior empirical results (Prendergast...

We derive and present the formula for optimal debt under the assumption that tax shields are discounted at the cost of levered equity, Ke and cash flows are on perpetuity. The formulation is consistent and is derived from basic financial principles. This formulation is valid for non-growing...

This paper presents the derivation of non-circular formulas for the calculation of the cost of equity, WACC, equity value (as a function either of initial debt or leverage), and levered firm value, using some previous results and showing their consistency with other well-known expressions....

This paper presents a formal derivation of general expressions for Ke and WACC in perpetuities with constant growth, which do not make any assumption on what the proper discount rate is to be applied to the firm's tax shield, and are complemented with numerical examples of its application....

There are methods to match value added approaches (Residual Income Method, RIM and Economic Value Added, EVA) with discounted cash flow methods, DCF. In this note we use a real life case from an emerging country to illustrate the matching, with complexities such as unpaid taxes, losses carried...

I identify three sources of risk for the tax shields: two of them associated to the risk of debt and one associated to the operating risk. I present a set of conditions for defining risky debt associated to cash flow and not to accounting earnings. I explain why realization of tax shields for...

In this paper we propose an analytical solution to the circularity problem between value and cost of capital. Our solution is derived starting from a central principle of finance that relates value today to value, cash flow, and the discount rate for next period. We derive a general formulation...