We model the interaction between product market competition and internal governance at firms. Competition makes it more difficult to infer a manager's action given the realized output, thus increasing the cost of inducing effort. An exogenous change in the incentive to shirk increases managerial...

This paper investigates the effects of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) on CEO compensation, using panel data constructed for the S&P 1500 firms on CEO compensation, financial returns, and reported accounting income. Empirically SOX (i) changes the relationship between a firm's abnormal returns and...

This paper investigates the effects of regulatory interventions on contracting relationships within firms by examining the impacts of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) on CEO compensation. Using panel data of the S&P 1500 firms, it quantifies welfare gains from a dynamic principal-agent model of...

This article provides evidence that managers have private information they exploit for financial gain at the expense of shareholders. It develops a model of optimal contracting to show that moral hazard, hidden actions taken by agents, can rationalize why a principal would optimally induce...

This article provides evidence that managers have private information they exploit for financial gain at the expense of shareholders. It develops a model of optimal contracting to show that moral hazard, hidden actions taken by agents, can rationalize why a principal would optimally induce...

As the share of all income going to the top 1 percent has risen over the past four decades, so has the share of top incomes coming from labor income relative to capital income. The rise in labor income is mainly due to the explosion in executive compensation over the same period—mostly...