Purpose -This paper seeks to present and test a model of the association between dividend payout and executive compensation. Design/methodology/approach - The authors develop a model based on Bhattacharyya whereby managerial quality is unobservable to shareholders, and therefore first-best...

Over the past decade, Canadian health care expenditures have grown at a rate significantly higher than that of the growth in the economy and the growth in combined federal-provincial tax revenues. However, allocating an increasing amount of resources to health care does not necessarily lead to...

Purpose – This paper seeks to present and test a model of the association between dividend payout and executive compensation. Design/methodology/approach – The authors develop a model based on Bhattacharyya whereby managerial quality is unobservable to shareholders, and therefore...

Dissatisfaction with traditional accounting-based performance measures has spawned a number of alternatives, of which Economic Value Added (EVA) is clearly the most prominent. How can we tell which performance measures best capture managerial contributions to value? There is currently a heated...

Proponents of EVA and related 'shareholder value' measures intend to replace earnings and to supplement stock returns by including their own measures in managerial compensation schemes. Stern Stewart's EVA appears to be the most widely recognized measure. However, there are not very many firms...

Academics have long argued that incentive contracts for executives should be indexed to remove the influence of exogenous market factors. Little evidence has been found that firms engage in such practices, also termed 'relative performance evaluation'. We argue that firms may not gainmuch by...

Employee stock options represent a significant potential source of dilution for many shareholders. It is well known that reported earnings tend to understate the associated costs, but an efficient stock market will show no such bias. If by contrast stock prices underestimate the future costs...