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...

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...

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...

Principal-agent theory suggests that a manager should be paid relative to a benchmark that captures the effect of market or sector performance on the firm's own performance. Recently, it has been argued that we do not observe such indexation in the data because executives can set pay in their...

In this paper, we provide a novel rationale for credit ratings. The rationale that we propose is that credit ratings can serve as a coordinating mechanism in situations where multiple equilibria can obtain. We show that credit ratings provide a "focal point" for firms and their investors. We...

In organizations, ideas are often delegated for evaluation as a means of efficiently aggregating multiple information signals. However, those who delegate often find it impossible to separate the evaluation of the ideas they delegate from the evaluation of abilities of those delegated the task...

This paper advocates a shift in regulatory design in light of the increasingly competitive and dynamic environment of banking. Intrusive, control-oriented direct and indirect approaches to regulation have become increasingly costly. We advocate regulation that focuses on setting minimum...