In this paper, we study a setting where a firm (principal) is privately informed of the firm's potential and contracts with an agent to supply unobservable effort. We show it can be optimal for the firm to have loose monitoring in the sense that the monitoring system is less perfect than what is...

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...

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...

This paper reviews and proposes additional research concerning the role of publicly reported financial accounting information in the governance processes of corporations. We first review and analyze research on the use of financial accounting measures in managerial incentive plans and explore...

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...

This paper reviews agency theory and its application to accounting issues. I discuss the formulation of models of incentive problems caused by moral hazard and adverse selection problems. I review theoretical research on the role of performance measures in compensation contracts, and I compare...

We study an extension of a two-period inventory management problem with positively correlated demands in which the manager's compensation is partially based on an external, market-based assessment of the firm's value. As typically the "real'' demand is only observed internally in the firm, the...

Using an experiment in which participants design rebus puzzles, we extend recent research on creativity-weighted productivity (i.e., quantity weighted by creativity ratings) by allowing participants to choose between a contract that rewards creativity-weighted productivity or one that rewards...

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 model career concerns in a regime where a linear incentive contract includes a mix of a publicly observed performance measure and a second, correlated, private measure that is not observed by the labor market. Under this quot;mixquot; regime, we find that agent effort and total agency payoff...