Compensation schemes have been blamed for encouraging excess risk-taking on the part of managers within the financial system and real economy. In general, compensation cannot decrease below the base salary, while gains from bonuses can be limitless. The potential link between compensation and...

Two alternative relative compensation schemes are compared with respect to total output that can be generated at a given sum of salaries. While the promotion regime guarantees that any salary increase is permanent, the premium system allows a reduction in the income of an agent to the base...

We model a multidivisional firm as a three-tier economic organization. The larger the number of divisions, the lower is the owner's capacity to monitor delegated managers. We show how resultant misaligned managerial incentives can translate into differences in employee incentive schemes between...

Prior evidence on how executive compensation influences managerial incentives to take risks in shareholder’s interest ignores potential spillover effects, even though there is evidence that compensation in one firm affects the compensation in other firms. We address this issue in a way that...