We examine compensation contracts for managers in imperfectly competitive product markets. We show that strategic interactions among firms can explain the lack of relative performance-based incentives in which compensation decreases with rival firm performance. The need to soften product market...

We show that top management incentives vary by responsibility. For oversight executives, pay-performance incentives are $1.22 per thousand dollar increase in shareholder wealth higher than for divisional executives. For CEOs, incentives are $5.65 higher than for divisional executives. Incentives...

We develop a contracting model between shareholders and managers in which managers diversify their firms for two reasons: to reduce idiosyncratic risk and to capture private benefits. We test the comparative static predictions of our model. In contrast to previous work, we find that...

If the United States switched to a broad-based consumption tax, then all forms of saving would enjoy the tax-preferred status reserved primarily for retirement saving vehicles under the current income tax system. Because pensions have other unique characteristics besides their tax advantage,...

The Two Percent Plan (TTP) is a plan to save Social Security based on personal retirement accounts financed initially out of the budget surplus; this article discusses issues regarding problems the TTP can address and a way the TTP can be efficiently implemented.

Shows how current social security benefit rules have created a variety of social security net marginal tax rates that differ by age, sex, marital status and income in ways that reduse the equity and efficiency of the social security program.