Contributions published at Managerial Accounting (Robert Göx)

We study managers’ decisions to bias financial reports if these reports are used by capital and labor markets to learn about firm value and managerial talent. If managers have private information on their financial and reputational incentives, we identify interactions in the capital and labor markets’ use of reports: The reception of reports in one market motivates reporting bias, which reduces value relevance and price efficiency in the other market. This interaction changes established results and has implications for financial reporting standard setters: We characterize environments where capital market efficiency can be improved by eliminating information on managerial talent from financial reports – even if this information is relevant for investors. This is particularly the case if there is high uncertainty about managers’ reputational concerns and if talent uncertainty represents a small part of the overall fundamental uncertainty.

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I study the consequences of a random exposure to common risk for the purpose of relative performance evaluation (RPE) and find that it significantly affects the usefulness and the empirical measurement of RPE. According to my analysis, the magnitude of the exposure risk not only determines how firms aggregate measures of common risk with measures of firm performance but also the extent to which the firms can control the impact of common risk on their own performance. Simulated regressions of my theoretical model indicate that a high exposure risk can prevent the correct identification of informative performance signals and cause a biased composition of customized peer groups. A high exposure risk also increases the likelihood of a type II error in implicit RPE tests. I evaluate two empirical strategies to control for the magnitude of the exposure risk and find that they significantly reduce the likelihood of a type II error.

In this work we extend RPE-contracts (Relative Performance Evaluation) to dynamic multi-period LEN-settings. In addition to the shared market risk and the respective idiosyncratic risks of the focal firm and its peers, we take into account that the central tendencies of these fluctuation phenomena are unknown and that additional risk is created in case of their misjudgement. In our model, the firm can observe its own and the peers performances. An updating process allows the firm to use these observations to learn about the latter risk factor over time. Since both, the firm and its peers are prone to idiosyncratic risk and exposed to market risk, the learning process is twofold. Instead of looking at RPE-weights in terms of static values, we analyze them from the perspective of a convergence problem and find that in a dynamic information environment RPE-weights either monotonically increase or decrease over time. We identify the decisive model parameters and explain how they influence the direction and speed of the RPE-weight changes during the updating process over time. Our investigation comprises successive independent one-period RPE-contracts as well as multi-period renegotiation-proof RPE-contracts.

Den wertorientierten Kennzahlen wie dem Economic Value Added (EVA) und dem Cash Flow Return on Investment liegen Annahmen hinsichtlich der künftigen Entwicklung von Unternehmen zugrunde. Dieser Beitrag analysiert den Zusammenhang zwischen diesen wertorientierten Kennzahlen und dem mit Discounted Cash Flow Verfahren ermittelten Unternehmenswert und zeigt mögliche Limitationen beim praktischen Einsatz der wertorientierten Kennzahlen auf.

Empirical research in the economic literature is increasingly addressing the implications of social comparison on incentive contracts by using analytical principal-agent models. Contrary to the existing investigations, which are primarily based on the assumption that individuals exclusively compare monetary income, theories of behavioral science suggest that monetary income and effort represent different dimensions of social comparison, which are weighted individually. Using a LEN framework, the present study focuses on this aspect of social comparisons and discusses how these dimensions and their individual weights affect optimal contract design and contract efficiency. I consider status-seeking agents who compare themselves to each other and differ with regard to their intensity of social preferences and the specific relevance of dimensions. Finally, I draw conclusions for the drafting of contracts with respect to (1) the choice of performance measures and (2) an optimal team composition.

We study the efficiency of negotiated transfer pricing for solving a bilateral hold-up problem in a multinational enterprise. We show that negotiated transfer pricing will generally not provide incentives for an efficient renegotiation of the initial contract and efficient investments because the divisions possess only one instrument for solving two problems. Either they minimize taxes or they redistribute the gains from efficient trade. The second-best solution solves the renegotiation problem under the arm`s length constraint. It entails that the firm either executes the ex-ante contract or entirely ignores tax considerations when making a quantity adjustment. We also find that the optimal investment decision and the optimal ex-ante contract are governed by the nature of the international tax difference.

I study the impact of ''say on pay'' (SoP) on the compensation decisions and the structure of the board of directors (BoD) in a setting where the CEO has the real authority over the composition of the BoD. The CEO's authority arises endogenously from an informational advantage about individual board members' contribution to firm value and allows her to establish a dependent BoD. Shareholders approve the CEO's director slate because they can only control the level of board dependence but not the board's contribution to firm value. In this setting, SoP has two effects. On the one hand, it prompts a BoD with a given dependence level to reduce the CEO's bonus. On the other hand, it allows the CEO to extract the rent generated by the improved compensation policy and to establish a more dependent BoD. In equilibrium the board becomes more dependent from the CEO and pays her a higher bonus for the same performance. This outcome can only be avoided if the CEO is restricted in her ability to adjust the board composition. Motivated by existing differences in SoP design, I also analyze the consequences of a binding and a pre-contractual vote. I find that a binding vote creates a moral hazard problem on the part of the firm's shareholders if the vote takes place after the agent has supplied her effort. Its consequences critically depend on the legal protection standard of the CEO. Whenever the shareholders can enforce a retroactive bonus cut, the allowable amount of the bonus reduction determines whether or not SoP improves the efficiency of the pay process or diminishes firm value. I show that the moral hazard problem can be avoided by a pre-contractual vote. If the vote is binding, SoP can improve the efficiency of the compensation arrangement and effectively reduce the equilibrium level of board dependence without impairing the CEO's effort incentives.

Die Debatte über Managerlöhne und mögliche Regulierungen hält an. Der Autor schlägt im Folgenden vor, die Entlöhnung relativ zu Gewinn oder Marktwert des Unternehmens zu messen.

We conduct an experiment to study different shareholder voting right regimes in a setting where shareholders provide incentives to a CEO for a risky project choice through a discretionary bonus scheme. We compare three different types of shareholder voting rights (advisory, unconditionally binding, and conditionally binding voting rights) to the baseline case where shareholders have no say on CEO pay. We make the following observations: (1) Advisory and conditionally binding voting rights do not distort CEO investment incentives. Unconditionally binding voting rights adversely affect the CEO’s investment incentives. (2) Unconditionally binding voting rights are an effective instrument to curb executive compensation. Advisory shareholder voting rights have the opposite effect and can even increase executive compensation. (3) Most shareholders reject CEO bonus proposals whenever they have the right to do so. This effect is independent of the type of voting right in place and becomes more pronounced in case of poor project performance. (4) Advisory and conditionally binding voting rights have only limited impact on firm profit and executive compensation. In contrast, unconditionally binding voting rights reduce both, firm profit and executive compensation significantly. Overall, our results suggest that regulators should carefully evaluate dysfunctional economic consequences of shareholder voting rights before they are introduced or before existing rules are tightened.

This paper studies qualitative characteristics of accounting systems that are used in debt financing. We consider a financially constrained firm that provides to lenders information on the value of assets that serve as collateral in a financing contract for a risky investment project. We find that the investor prefers an accounting system that provides biased signals about the value of assets. This bias adjusts the information content of the signals to maximize the probability of undertaking the project. Under fair value accounting, low book values are more precise measures of actual value than high book values, which is consistent with conditional conservatism. Next, we study accounting risk to study the effect of institutions that govern the financial reporting policy based on the optimal precision. We find that fair value measurement introduces greater accounting risk and is preferred by financially constrained firms to measurement at historical cost.

Dutta and Reichelstein (2010) study the role of transfer pricing and organizational choice in providing incentives for efficient decisions on the acquisition and subsequent reallocation of capacity within decentralized firms. Their analysis suggests that transfer prices based on the historical cost of capacity facilitate the efficient allocation of resources. They also find that symmetric responsibility center structures are generally better suited for providing efficient investment incentives than hybrid organizations. An important condition for the derivation of the two results is the linearity of the shadow prices of capacity. If shadow prices are nonlinear, transfer prices should be below (above) the historical cost of capacity in order to counteract the managers’ incentives to underinvest (overinvest). Because profit center organizations can use transfer prices for mitigating the inefficiency caused by nonlinear shadow prices, they offer a natural advantage over pure investment center organizations in implementing efficient capacity decisions. Overall, these observations suggest that the curvature of profit functions is an important factor in determining the suitable instruments for decentralized capacity management.