Abstract This research examines the effect that adoption of earnings-based incentive plans has on performance and capital expenditure policy in the motor carrier industry. The motor carrier industry provides the opportunity to study the effect of incentive plans on small, closely-held organizations. Restricting the sample to a single industry controls for variations in accounting procedures, heterogeneous production functions, and other environmental factors. Firms that adopted bonus and performance plans are matched with similar firms without such plans. The matching criteria are size, carrier type, and freight classification. The dependent variables are operating ratio, net income, capital expenditures, and maintenance expenditures. The analysis investigates the extent to which the groups differ in performance and investment policy before and after plan adoption. The results indicate that motor carriers that adopted bonus plans had out-performed the respective control firms during the post-adoptive period. This relatively improved performance is not linked to reductions in capital or maintenance expenditures. Although the results for performance plan adopters are in the expected directions, they are not statistically significant.

Using a sample of privately held C corporations and S corporations from the motor carrier industry during 1984–92, we assess the effect of the 1986 Tax Reform Act on the amount of corporate income shareholders of privately held C corporations shifted to their personal tax bases. We estimate that the C corporations shifted a mean of $130,587 taxable income each year to shareholders (representing 29% of their mean accounting earnings before income shifting) after the 1986 tax law change. The C corporations used deductible managerial compensation and rent expense, but not interest expense, to shift income to shareholders.