Research Interests
Topics: Performance measurement, dynamic contracting, accounting rules, dynamic games, real options, information disclosure
Methodologies: Analytical, archival
Working Papers
Learning, Accounting Information, and Contracting Dynamics
I develop a dynamic principal-agent model where short/long-term incentives and performance based turnover are jointly used to motivate productive activity in a setting with learning. The agent controls underlying fundamentals and can manipulate earnings at the expense of future reversals. Long-term incentives are optimal due to the interaction between learning and the reversal of earnings manipulations. Positive manipulation becomes optimal as long-term incentives have vested and the agency approaches termination in order to reduce the probability of inefficient turnover. This paper shows how incentive dynamics and turnover decisions are shaped by learning and performance measurement. In doing so, it generates novel empirical predictions on the impact of learning and measurement on the duration of incentive pay, the relationship between contractual convexity and productive effort, and the use of implicit incentives over termination.
Dynamic Moral Hazard and Optimal Accruals
with Jonathan Bonham
We derive optimal contracting and accrual accounting policies in a continuous-time moral hazard framework. An agent who takes actions to generate current and future cash flows is compensated via a contract written on cash flows, which contain timing errors, and accounting earnings, which correct these timing errors at the expense of introducing measurement errors. We show that deferred incentives and accruals are substitutes in solving the incentive problems created by cash flow timing errors. Late in the agency relationship, the optimal contract is short-term and the optimal accrual policy is standardized — it is time invariant, accrual-heavy, and driven by measurability rather than agency-specific parameters. By contrast, early in the agency relationship the optimal contract is long-term and the optimal accrual policy is non-standardized — it changes over time, corrects fewer timing errors than the standardized policy, and varies with agency-specific parameters. Our model sheds light on the relation between accruals and the timing of incentives, as well as the use of accounting-based performance measures over the manager’s tenure.
Investment, Dynamic Information Acquisition, and Disclosure
with Iván Marinovic
In this paper, we develop a model where information acquisition and disclosure are jointly chosen over time. The manager seeks to maximize future stock prices, and collects information privately about the firm fundamentals. Information acquisition increases the arrival rate of private information signals, but it is costly. The manager can choose to make public disclosures about his information if any. Our model can characterize the trade-offs in the dual information acquisition/disclosure decision when such decisions have to be made over time and the manager has reputational concerns. We consider the impact of the information acquisition and disclosure activities upon the firm’s endogenous productivity investments. Furthermore, we analyze the optimal mandatory disclosure frequency from the perspective of a regulator aiming to maximize firm value.
Selected Works in Progress
On the Relation between Inventory Costing and Reputation
with Iván Marinovic
We study a dynamic model of inventory management in which firms have private information about their quality and markets learn about product quality based on the firm’s reported earnings. Earnings are computed according to full absorption costing: producing an additional unit of inventory lowers unit costs since fixed overhead costs are capitalized, but leads to inventory holding costs. We show that overproducing inventory is a noisy signaling device aimed at communicating the underlying product quality to the market. Higher-quality firms that expect more and faster demand arrivals manage their inventory policies to signal/separate themselves from lower-quality firms, and thus induce a higher price at the reporting date. We study the optimal timing of mandatory disclosure under full costing and differing degrees of fixed cost absorption. We also examine the impact of variable costing on signaling incentives.
Tangible and Intangible Investment in Long-Term Contracts
The Role of Performance Measurement in Shaping Termination Decisions
Uncertainty, Performance Measurement, and the Provision of Dynamic Incentives: Theory and Evidence
In this paper, I examine how the interaction between performance measurement and uncertainty affects the provision of long-term incentives. Guided by a stochastic filtering model where stock prices and earnings provide noisy measures of the same underlying economic construct, unobservable firm fundamentals, I develop a novel empirical measure of intertemporal information asymmetry between the principal and the agent, the rate at which the principal’s beliefs over underlying fundamentals match those of the agent’s. It represents the degree to which stock price and earnings information alleviate the moral hazard problem. This measure helps explain variation in executive pay duration and the use of performance-vesting incentive provisions in long-term compensation contracts. The dynamics of incentives are thus driven primarily by informational concerns, in contrast to the managerial entrenchment view of the executive pay process.
Continuous Measurement with Periodic Reporting: The Economic Effects of Disclosure Frequency
In this paper, I examine the relation between disclosure frequency and the properties of incentives in executive compensation contracts in a setting where periodic financial reports measure unobservable fundamental performance. I develop a continuous-time framework of periodic financial reports that are released at discrete points in time to capture the fact that, while transactions take place continuously, financial statements are only released at predetermined points in time. I explicitly model the financial reporting process as a stochastic jump process where the agent controls the mean jump size at each reporting time. The earnings release times are deterministic at a given frequency level. When financial statements are the only source of information regarding fundamental performance, the optimal compensation contract exhibits jumps for low frequency levels, but gets smoother as disclosure frequency increases. If there is another source of information that is observed continuously, such as cash flows or voluntary disclosures, the contract contains both smooth and discontinuous incentive components.
Accounting Aggregation in Long-Term Incentive Contracts
with Amoray Riggs-Cragun
The construction of accounting-based performance measures entails two primary forms of aggregation. First, the occurrence of like transactions or events are aggregated over time into distinct accounts as dictated by Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP). Second, accounts are aggregated together in specific ways to construct relevant accounting measures. We develop a fully dynamic principal-agent model which captures both types of aggregation. In our model, a manager controls the intensity of the firm’s revenue and expense accounts, which we model as Poisson processes. These accounts can be aggregated into earnings, which we model as a Skellam process. We study how the second-best levels of revenue-generating effort versus cost-cutting effort evolve over the course of the contracting relationship, as well as how optimal incentives change over time. We also explore conditions under which contracting on aggregated measures may be desirable.
Trade Under Asymmetric Information: A Reader’s Companion
(monograph)
with Thomas Hemmer
There are plenty of good books available that provide summaries and overviews of key contributions of information economics to our understanding of the role of rules and contracts for the functioning of markets. Writing another book of this form makes little sense, and this is not our aim. Rather than providing a substitute for reading the fundamental papers we cover, our goal is to help facilitate the reading of the underlying papers. As such, although entirely feasible, this monograph is not meant to be read as a stand-alone document, but instead read in conjunction with the papers that we cover. The individual notes are structured to help readers through some of the technicalities that, in our experience, stand between readers new to this literature and the important insights that these papers contain. While technically rigorous, we also provide intuition and tie the papers together to help the user better “see the forest for the trees.” Although the monograph spans both classical so-called “Disclosure” and “Contracting” papers, we avoid this segmentation and instead emphasize the commonalities to help readers better explore the links between the individual papers and particular market structures and circumstances.