Abstract Relative performance evaluation (RPE) is widely used to filter out common shocks, but it is prone to collusion. We study the performance of RPE when agents are differentially productive (or evaluated in a biased manner). While such diversity is always costly in a static setting, it can be useful in repeated interactions, because it makes it harder for agents to collude. We identify conditions under which the principal prefers independent or joint performance evaluation if agents are identical but prefers RPE if they are diverse. In low-skill industries, the principal should offer asymmetric contracts even to homogeneous agents—a form of favoritism—as the cheapest way to combat collusion. Our results generate novel empirical predictions and contribute to the recent literature linking accounting and labor economics.

This paper examines transfer pricing in multinational firms when individual divisions face different income tax rates. Assuming that a firm decouples its internal transfer price from the arm's length price used for tax purposes, we analyze the effectiveness of alternative pricing rules under both cost- and market-based transfer pricing. In a tax-free world, Hirshleifer (1956) advocated that the internal transfer price be set equal to the marginal cost of the supplying division. Extending this solution, we argue that the optimal internal transfer price should be a weighted average of the pre-tax marginal cost and the most favorable arm's length price. When the supplying division also sells the intermediate product in question to outside parties, the external price becomes a natural candidate for the arm's length price. We argue that for internal performance evaluation purposes firms should generally not value internal transactions at the prevailing market price if the supplying division has monopoly power in the external market. By imposing intracompany discounts, firms can alleviate attendant double marginalization problems and, at the same time, realize tax savings due to differences in income tax rates. Our analysis characterizes optimal intracompany discounts as a function of the market parameters and the divisional tax rates.

ABSTRACT We consider the optimal allocation of decision rights over noncontractible specific investments. Risk-averse business unit managers each engage in general (stand-alone) operations and invest in joint projects that benefit their own and other divisions. Which of the managers should have the authority to choose these investments? With scalable investments, we show that decision rights should be bundled in the hands of the manager facing the more volatile environment. With discrete (lumpy) investments, on the other hand, decision rights should be split between the managers, provided they face comparable levels of uncertainty in their general operations. Splitting decision rights better leverages the inherent investment complementarity, counter to conventional wisdom. Our model generates empirical predictions for the equilibrium association of organizational structure and managers' incentive contracts: bundling of decision rights results in pay-performance sensitivity (PPS) divergence across divisions; splitting them results in PPS convergence. JEL Classifications: M41; D23; D86.

ABSTRACT We demonstrate a novel link between relationship-specific investments and risk in a setting where division managers operate under moral hazard and collaborate on joint projects. Specific investments increase efficiency at the margin. This expands the scale of operations and thereby adds to the compensation risk borne by the managers. Accounting for this investment/risk link overturns key findings from prior incomplete contracting studies. We find that if the investing manager has full bargaining power vis-à-vis the other manager, he will underinvest relative to the benchmark of contractible investments; with equal bargaining power, however, he may overinvest. The reason is that the investing manager internalizes only his own share of the investment-induced risk premium (we label this a “risk transfer”), whereas the principal internalizes both managers' incremental risk premia. We show that high pay-performance sensitivity (PPS) reduces the managers' incentives to invest in relationship-specific assets. The optimal PPS, thus, trades off investment and effort incentives.

We study the optimal composition of corporate boards. Directors can be either monitoring or advisory types. Monitoring constrains the empire-building tendency of chief executive officers (CEOs). If shareholders control the board nomination process, a non-monotonic relation ensues between agency problems and board composition. To preempt CEO entrenchment, shareholders may assemble an adviser-heavy board. If a powerful CEO influences the nomination process, this may result in a more monitor-heavy board. Regulations strengthening the monitoring role of boards can be harmful in precisely those cases in which agency problems are severe or in which CEO entrenchment is a threat to corporate governance.

This paper explores the effects of public information such as accounting earnings in a competitive lending setting with risk shifting. Debt financing creates incentives for borrowers to take on excessive risks, in particular in bad states of the world. If a privately informed inside creditor bids against outside creditors to extend a loan, public information levels the playing field, which affects the bidding and risk shifting. Nonetheless, a perfect public signal would yield the least efficient outcome: introducing some measurement noise alleviates risk shifting by subjecting outside creditors to the winner’s curse, allowing borrowers in bad states cheaper access to loans. However, for pessimistic priors about the borrower, greater public signal precision can alleviate risk shifting, at the margin. We discuss implications for financial reporting regulations along the business cycle and for creditor turnover.

We study a dynamic multi-agent model with a verifiable team performance measure and non-verifiable individual measures. The optimal contract can be interpreted as an explicit contract that specifies a minimum bonus pool as a function of the verifiable measure and an implicit contract that gives the principal discretion to increase the size of the pool and to allocate it among the agents. To mitigate the threat of collusion, the optimal contract often converts any exogenous productive interdependence into strategic payoff independence for the agents. Under productive complements, an unconditional bonus pool (pay without performance) can be less costly than one conditioned on the verifiable team measure.

Investment decisions frequently require coordination across multiple divisions of a firm. This paper explores a class of capital budgeting mechanisms in which the divisions issue reports regarding the anticipated profitability of proposed projects. To hold the divisions accountable for their reports, the central office ties the project acceptance decision to a system of cost allocations comprised of depreciation and capital charges. If the proposed project concerns a common asset that benefits multiple divisions, then our analysis derives a sharing rule for dividing the asset among the users. Capital charges are based on a hurdle rate determined by the divisional reports. We find that this hurdle rate deviates from the firm's cost of capital in a manner that depends crucially on whether the coordination problem is one of implementing a common asset or choosing among multiple competing projects. We also find that more severe divisional agency problems will increase the hurdle rate for common assets, yet this is generally not true for competing projects.

ABSTRACT We study a corporate board tasked with monitoring a firm's CEO and providing incrementally decision-relevant information. The board has both compensation and non-pecuniary incentives—we label the latter board bias. Friendly boards have muted information gathering incentives, but can more effectively engage in cheap talk communication with management. As a result, the direction of the optimal board bias is determined by the CEO's initial information advantage: the board should be weakly friendly if the CEO is endowed with precise information, and weakly antagonistic (to the CEO) otherwise. Aside from assembling a friendly board, another way for shareholders to foster CEO/board communication is by granting the CEO more equity. In general, we find board friendliness and CEO equity grants to be positively associated, in equilibrium. This provides an optimal contracting rationale for an empirical regularity often interpreted as friendly boards facilitating rent extraction.