We study a dynamic agency problem with two-sided moral hazard: the worker chooses whether to exert effort or shirk; the manager chooses whether to invest in an attention technology to recognize worker performance. In equilibrium the worker uses past recognition to infer managerial attention. An engagement trap arises: absent recent recognition, both worker effort and managerial investment decre...

Extant studies of mergers and acquisitions have relied on stock price reactions to evaluate the impact of these events. In this paper, we analyze the performance of the Healy et al. (1992) sample over a ten year period using a managerially controlled efficiency measure, data envelopment analysis (DEA). Our individual firm-level year-by-year analyses results indicate that the managerial performa...

I investigate the relation between firm risk and firm transparency over the period 1992-2006 and find that the level of firm transparency and the level of firm risk are negatively related. I also find that higher CEO pay-performance sensitivity (delta) works to mitigate this inverse relationship. This result is consistent with Hermalin and Weisbach (2007) who suggest that managers reduce risk t...

This paper analyzes whether it might be desir~ble for a firm to hire an overoptimistic manager to commit to a certain R&D strategy. I consider a Cournot model with an ex-ante R&D stage where firms can invest in cost reduction before product market competition takes place. I show that firms want to hire overoptimistic managers and argue that a manager's type may serve as a substitute for strateg...

Existing research links CEO personality traits to a number of corporate decisions including overinvestment, external acquisitions, and earnings management. These findings raise the question of whether counterparties distinguish between differences in individual CEO behavior, and how they respond to it. We focus on two key counterparties – auditors and credit rating agencies – and examine whethe...

This paper presents preliminary evidence on the internal consistency and validity of a scale designed to measure the degree to which one believes women managers experience a greater number of obstacles and more critical judgments about their work performance as compared to managerial men (the Stereotype Beliefs about Women Managers scale; SBWMS). Survey data from 1337 managerial and nonmanageri...

This paper presents preliminary evidence on the internal consistency and validity of a scale designed to measure the degree to which one believes women managers experience a greater number of obstacles and more critical judgments about their work performance as compared to managerial men (the Stereotype Beliefs about Women Managers scale; SBWMS). Survey data from 1337 managerial and nonmanageri...

Hedge fund managers charge management fees on assets under management (AUM) and incentive fees indexed to the high-water mark (HWM). We study the effects of fees and alpha on managerial dynamic leverage choice and valuation. Our main results are: (i) high-powered incentive fees encourage excessive risk taking, while management fees have the opposite effect; (ii) agency conflicts have significan...

We model long-run firm performance, management compensation, and corporate governance in a dynamic, nonstationary world. We show that managerial compensation and governance policies, which, in a single-period context, can best be rationalized by self-serving managerial influence over board policy, are shareholder-wealth maximizing in a dynamic setting. For example, shareholder wealth is maximiz...