Corporations have been criticized for providing executives with excessive incentives to focus on short-term performance. This paper shows that investment in short-term projects has beneficial effects in that it provides early feedback about Chief Executive Officer (CEO) talent, which leads to more efficient replacement decisions. Due to the threat of CEO turnover, the optimal design of stock option vesting conditions in executive compensation is more subtle than conventional views suggest. For example, I show that long vesting periods can backfire and induce excessive short-term investments. The study generates new empirical predictions regarding the determinants and impacts of stock option vesting terms in optimal contracting.

We examine how the threat of litigation affects an entrepreneur's reporting behavior when the entrepreneur (i) can misrepresent his privately observed information, (ii) pays legal damages out of his own pocket, and (iii) is optimistic about the firm's prospects relative to investors. We find higher expected legal penalties imposed on the culpable entrepreneur do not always cause the entrepreneur to be more cautious but instead can increase misreporting. We highlight how this relation depends crucially on the extent of entrepreneurial overoptimism, legal frictions, and the internal control environment.