This paper analyses the joint provision of effort by an entrepreneur and by an advisor to improve the productivity of an investment project. Without moral hazard, it is optimal that both exert effort. With moral hazard, if the entrepreneur's effort is more efficient (less costly) than the advisor's effort, the latter is not hired if she does not provide funds. Outside financing arises endogenously. This explains why investors like venture capitalists are value enhancing. The level of outside financing determines whether common stocks or convertible bonds should be issued in response to incentives.

This paper argues that the legacy potential of a firm's strategy is an important determinant of CEO compensation, turnover, and strategy change. A legacy makes CEO replacement expensive, because firm performance can only partially be attributed to a newly employed manager. Boards may therefore optimally allow an incumbent to be entrenched. Moreover, when a firm changes strategy it is optimal to change the CEO, because the incumbent has a vested interest in seeing the new strategy fail. Even though CEOs have no specific skills in our model, legacy issues can explain the empirical association between CEO and strategy change.

We analyze the optimal financing of investment projects when managers must exert unobservable effort and can also switch to less profitable riskier ventures. Optimal financial contracts can be implemented by a combination of debt and equity when the risk‐shifting problem is the most severe while stock options are also needed when the effort problem is the most severe. Worsening of the moral hazard problems leads to decreases in investment and output at the macroeconomic level. Moreover, aggregate leverage decreases with the risk‐shifting problem and increases with the effort problem.

We analyze the optimal financing of investment projects when managers must exert unobservable effort and can also switch to less profitable riskier ventures. Optimal financial contracts can be implemented by a combination of debt and equity when the risk‐shifting problem is the most severe while stock options are also needed when the effort problem is the most severe. Worsening of the moral hazard problems leads to decreases in investment and output at the macroeconomic level. Moreover, aggregate leverage decreases with the risk‐shifting problem and increases with the effort problem.

We offer a general equilibrium analysis of cryptocurrency pricing. The fundamental value of the cryptocurrency is its stream of net transactional benefits, which depend on its future prices. This implies that, in addition to fundamentals, equilibrium prices reflect sunspots. This in turn implies multiple equilibria and extrinsic volatility, that is, cryptocurrency prices fluctuate even when fundamentals are constant. To match our model to the data, we construct indices measuring the net transactional benefits of Bitcoin. In our calibration, part of the variations in Bitcoin returns reflects changes in net transactional benefits, but a larger share reflects extrinsic volatility.