This paper reviews agency theory and its application to accounting issues. I discuss the formulation of models of incentive problems caused by moral hazard and adverse selection problems. I review theoretical research on the role of performance measures in compensation contracts, and I compare...

The consequences of information differences across investors in capital markets are still much debated. This paper examines the relation between information differences across investors and the cost of capital, and makes three points. First, in models of perfect competition, information...

This paper examines the relation between information differences across investors (i.e., information asymmetry) and the cost of capital and establishes that with perfect competition information asymmetry makes no difference. Instead, a firm's cost of capital is governed solely by the average...