We show that firms may benefit from allowing some earnings management, because it can make noisy signals more informative. We model a firm that cannot observe a manager's cost of effort, her effort choice, and whether she manipulated a publicly observable signal. An optimal contract links...

This paper develops a theory of board power when the board of directors collects private information about the CEOs ability to make value-increasing investments. When CEO ability is unknown ex-ante, we show that board power can be helpful in inducing information production by the board and in...