To address agents' moral hazard over effort, incentive contracts impose risk on the agents. As performance measures become noisier, the conventional agency analysis predicts that principals will reduce the incentive weights assigned to such measures. However, prior empirical results (Prendergast...

We present the derivation of cost of capital under the assumption of risky tax shields discounted with the cost of levered equity. We show that the formulation is consistent and is derived from basic financial principles. This formulation is valid for finite cash flows and non growing...

I identify three sources of risk for the tax shields: two of them associated to the risk of debt and one associated to the operating risk. I present a set of conditions for defining risky debt associated to cash flow and not to accounting earnings. I explain why realization of tax shields for...

This article (1) identifies three sources of risk for tax shields (TS): Two of them are associated with debt risk and one is associated with operating risk. (2) A set of conditions for defining risky debt associated with cash flow, not with earnings, is presented. (3) It further shows that...

In the presence of managerial short-termism and asymmetric information about skill and effort provision, firms may opportunistically shift earnings from uncertain to more certain times. We document that firms report more negative discretionary accruals when financial markets are less certain...

A performance standard's horizon is the time given to achieve the standard. Horizons vary considerably in practice, and the goal-setting literature provides mixed evidence on whether short or long horizons are more effective at eliciting effort from workers. I predict and find that uncertainty...

We examine the impact of the cultural norm of uncertainty avoidance on employee stock option (ESO) exercise behaviour using proprietary data from a multinational firm. We find that employees from countries with higher levels of uncertainty avoidance exercise their stock options earlier. These...

Probability weighting is one of the cornerstones of decision-making theories accommodating gambling preferences. This paper examines its relevance to explaining employee stock option exercise behavior. We characterized the optimal exercise policy for a representative employee with Rank-Dependent...

We discuss the valuation of credit derivatives in extreme regimes such as when the time-to-maturity is short, or when payoff is contingent upon a large number of defaults, as with senior tranches of collateralized debt obligations. In these cases, risk aversion may play an important role,...

I study the consequences of a random exposure to common risk for the purpose of relative performance evaluation (RPE) and find that it significantly affects the usefulness and the empirical measurement of RPE. According to my analysis, the magnitude of the exposure risk not only determines how...