Executive compensation has gained widespread public attention in recent years, with the pay of top U.S. executives reaching unprecedented levels compared either with past levels, with the remuneration of top executives in other countries, or with the wages and salaries of typical employees. The...

This Paper analyses corporate bond valuation and optimal call and default rules when interest rates and firm value are stochastic. It then uses the results to explain the dynamics of hedging. Bankruptcy rules are important determinants of corporate bond sensitivity to interest rates and firm...

The evaluation and compensation of portfolio managers is an important problem for practitioners. Optimal compensation will induce managers to expend effort to generate information and to use it appropriately in an informed portfolio choice. Our general model points the way towards analysis of...

This paper solves the dynamic investment problem of a risk averse manager compensated with a call option on the assets he controls. Under the manager's optimal policy, the option ends up either deep in or deep out of money. As the asset value goes to zero, volatility goes to infinity. However,...

We generate samples of fund returns calibrated to match the U.S. mutual fund industry and simulate standard tests of performance persistence. We consider a variety of alternative return generating processes, survival criteria, and test methodologies. When survival depends on performance over...