This paper studies incentives in a dynamic contracting framework of a levered firm. In particular, the manager selects long-term and short-term efforts, while shareholders choose initially optimal leverage and ex-post optimal default policies. Notably, a resource constraint that binds the...

We use a dynamic model of financing decisions to measure agency conflicts for a large panel of 12,652 firms from 14 countries. Our estimates show that agency conflicts are large and vary significantly across firms and countries. Differences in agency conflicts are largely due to differences in...

We build a dynamic agency model in which the agent controls both current earnings via short-term investment and firm growth via long-term investment. Under the optimal contract, agency conflicts can induce short- and long-term investment levels beyond first best, leading to short- or...