analytical solution for an investment problem under uncertainties with shocks abstract we derive the optimal investment decision in a project where both demand and investment cost are stochastic processes eventually subject to shocks we extend the approach used in dixit and pindyck 1994 to deal with two sources of uncertainty and we assume that the underlying processes are jump diffusion processes assuming certain conditions on the parameters we are able to derive a closed expression for the value of the firm finally we present comparative statics for the investment threshold with respect to the relevant parameters

optimal long term contracting with learning we introduce uncertainty into holmstrom and milgrom 1987 to study optimal long term contracting with learning in a dynamic relationship the agent s shirking not only reduces current performance but also increases the agent s information rent due to the persistent belief manipulation effect we characterize the optimal contract using the dynamic programming technique in which information rent is the unique state variable in the optimal contract the optimal effort is front loaded and stochastically decreases over time furthermore the optimal contract exhibits an option like feature in that incentives increase after good performance implications about managerial incentives and asset management compensations are discussed

a multiplicative model of optimal ceo incentives in market equilibrium this paper presents a unified theory of both the level and sensitivity of pay in competitive market equilibrium by embedding a moral hazard problem into a talent assignment model by considering multiplicative specifications for the ceo s utility and production functions we generate a number of different results from traditional additive models first both the ceo s low fractional ownership the jensen murphy incentives measure and its negative relationship with firm size can be quantitatively reconciled with optimal contracting and thus need not reflect rent extraction second the dollar change in wealth for a percentage change in firm value divided by annual pay is independent of firm size and therefore a desirable empirical measure of incentives third incentive pay is effective at solving agency problems with multiplicative impacts on firm value such as strategy choice however additive issues such as perk consumption are best addressed through direct monitoring jel d2 d3 g34 j3

delta hedging strategies comparison abstract in this paper we implement dynamic delta hedging strategies based on several option pricing models we analyze different subordinated option pricing models and we examine delta hedging costs using ex post daily prices of s p 500 furthermore we compare the performance of each subordinated model with the black scholes model

r d profitability the role of risk and knightian uncertainty this paper provides the first empirical attempt of linking firms profits and investment in r d revisiting knight s risk uncertainty and profit hart schaffner marx boston 1921 distinction between uncertainty and risk along with the risky profit maximising scenario identifying a second off setting unpredictable bias that leads to heterogeneous returns to r d investments is crucial to fully understand the drivers of corporate profits consistently with the knightian theory that relates risk to profitability we model the impact of risk and uncertainty on profits and provide a first empirical attempt to model the effect of ambiguity a particular type of uncertainty on r d returns

money and credit in liquidity provision abstract this paper studies the liquidity provision in a model where the roles of money are challenged by other financial instruments alternative to money credit can be used as means of payment and rate dominating assets are available to serve as stores of value two features are found to be crucial in rendering money valuable in this environment information asymmetry in credit trading relationship and uncertainty in individuals liquidity demand in general the model economy can display a payment mechanism of money only credit only or mixed use of money and credit in transactions depending on the severity of the information asymmetry the optimal quantity of money in our paper is shown to contrast those in other monetary models

rationalizing hyperbolic discounting abstract we show that if agents are uncertain about their discount rates it may be rational for them to discount the distant future hyperbolically rather than exponentially our findings thus may rationalize a common observation in experimental work which indicates that people discount the future at hyperbolic rates we show that under some assumptions uncertainty over hazard rates may lead to non constant discounting but not imply dynamically inconsistent behavior under other assumptions uncertainty over discount rates can lead to dynamically inconsistent behavior like violating planned consumption profiles by bringing consumption forward

money and loans agents expect to trade with each other infinitely often but face a temporal absence of a coincidence of wants when they meet only loans and or money can facilitate exchange in small close knit economies enduring trade relationships are valued and loans are optimal in larger economies with limited communication information concerning repayment of loans diffuses too slowly to deter agents from reneging unless loans are severely restricted in magnitude money has no such redeemability problems but if clower constraints bind loans help supplement money purchases so that both become essential roles of various institutions and the historical evolution of media of exchange are explained

optimal contracts under adverse selection and moral hazard a continuous time approach this article presents a continuous time agency model in the presence of adverse selection and moral hazard with a risk averse agent and a risk neutral principal under the model setup we show that the optimal controls are constant over time and thus the optimal menu consists of contracts that are linear in the final outcome we also show that when a moral hazard problem adds to an adverse selection problem the monotonicity condition well known in the pure adverse selection literature needs to be modified to ensure the incentive compatibility for information revelation the model is applied to a few managerial compensation problems involving managerial project selection and capital budgeting decisions we argue that in the third best world the relationship between the volatility of the outcome and the sensitivity of the contract depends on interactions between the managerial cost and the firm s production functions contrary to conventional wisdom sometimes the higher the volatility the higher the sensitivity of the contract the firm receiving good news sometimes chooses safer projects or invests less than it does with bad news we also examine the effects of the observability of the volatility on corporate investment decisions copyright 2005 oxford university press

the valuation of sequential exchange opportunities sequential exchange opportunities are valued using the techniques of modern option pricing theory the vehicle for analysis is the concept of a compound exchange option this security is shown to exist implicitly in several contractual settings a valuation formula for this option is derived the formula is shown to generalize much previous work in option pricing several applications of the formula are presented

pay performance sensitivity and production uncertainty abstract the pay performance sensitivity of linear incentive contracts can increase with increasing production uncertainty depending upon the timing and nature of this uncertainty this provides a possible explanation for the failure of empirical tests to yield convincing support for a negative relationship

incentives learning and compensation a theoretical and empirical investigation of managerial labor contracts this article analyzes properties and implications of multiperiod managerial labor contracts under two alternative hypotheses incentives in which productivity depends on unobservable effort and learning in which ability is unknown and is revealed over time shared and conflicting implications of these competing models are developed in terms of experienceearnings profiles and the relation between compensation and performance i empirically examine these theoretical results by using a longitudinal sample of 1 488 chief executive officers followed from 1974 1985 the data yield mixed evidence that generally supports the learning hypothesis over the incentive hypothesis

venture capital staged financing and optimal funding policies under uncertainty abstract our paper presents a dynamic model of entrepreneurial venture financing under uncertainty based on option exercise games between an entrepreneur and a venture capitalist vc in particular we analyze the impact of multi staged financing and both economic and technological uncertainty on optimal contracting in the context of vc financing our novel approach combines compound option pricing with sequential non cooperative contracting allowing us to determine whether renegotiation will improve the probability of coming to an agreement and proceed with the venture it is shown that both sources of uncertainty positively impact the vc investor s optimal equity share specifically higher uncertainty leads to a larger stake in the venture and renegotiation may result in a dramatic shift of control rights in the venture preventing the venture from failure moreover given ventures with low volatility situations might occur where the vc investor loses his first mover advantage based on a comparative static analysis new testable hypotheses for further empirical studies are derived from the model

anomalies in intertemporal choice evidence and an interpretation research on decision making under uncertainly has been strongly influenced by the documentation of numerous expected utility eu anomalies behaviors that violate the expected utility axioms the relative lack of progress on the closely related topic of intertemporal choice is partly due to the absence of an analogous set of discounted utility du anomalies we enumerate a set of du anomalies analogous to the eu anomalies and propose a model that accounts for the anomalies as well as other intertemporal choice phenomena incompatible with du we discuss implications for savings behavior estimation of discount rates and choice framing effects

an analysis of the use of accounting and market measures of performance in executive compensation contracts prior research has provided useful insights into the structure of compensation plans and their incentive effects however one important limitation of these studies is the virtual absence of any cross sectional analyses of the attributes of compensation contracts 2 this absence is related in part to the problems associated with controlling for other factors that affect compensation that is compensation contracts are

real investment options with multiple sources of rare events abstract we value real investment options when the underlying asset follows a mixed jump diffusion process involving various types sources of rare events jumps these jumps are assumed independent of each other with each type having a log normally distributed jump size and a random poisson distributed arrival time they may represent uncertainties about the arrival and impact on the underlying investment of new information concerning technological innovation competition political risk regulatory effects and other sources an analytic solution is presented for european claims call or put options with multiple sources of jumps a discrete time markov chain methodology implemented within a finite difference scheme is proposed for the valuation of american as well as european options the approach is also applicable to financial options with multiple types of rare events the approach is illustrated through valuing complex real options with compound features involving interactions between optimal investment and subsequent operating decisions specifically we value a growth option and an extension option

uncertainty risk and incentives theory and evidence uncertainty has qualitatively different implications than risk in studying executive incentives we study the interplay between profitability uncertainty and moral hazard where profitability is multiplicative with managerial effort investors who face greater uncertainty desire faster learning and consequently offer higher managerial incentives to induce higher effort from the manager in contrast to the standard negative risk incentive trade off this learning by doing effect generates a positive relation between profitability uncertainty and incentives we document empirical support for this prediction this paper was accepted by wei jiang finance

evolutionary competition in a mixed market with socially concerned firms abstract in this paper we study an oligopoly market where profit maximizing firms and socially concerned firms compete in quantities confronting remarks by milton friedman and gary becker we are using an evolutionary setting to investigate the endogenous choice of the proper objective of business firms and the influence of product differentiation on the long run survival of firms which pursue non profit motives we find that firms which consider a combination of profit and consumer welfare can indeed have larger market shares and profits than their profit maximizing rivals one insight is that it might pay off for shareholders to consider stakeholder welfare but that the level of social concern should not be too high based on a strategy s profitability we consider asynchronous evolutionary updating with firms selecting nash quantities or choosing best replies to the expected market quantity here we observe that the consumers willingness to pay a price premium for products is crucial for the long run survival of socially concerned firms depending on the degrees of product differentiation and social concern long run outcomes consist either of both types of firms or only one type of firm if the firms propensity to switch between a social or a profit maximizing strategy is sufficiently large steady states are unstable and even complicated dynamics can occur

strategic growth options we provide a strategic rationale for growth options under uncertainty and imperfect competition in a market with strategic competition investment confers a greater capability to take advantage of future growth opportunities this strategic advantage leads to the capture of a greater share of the market either by dissuading entry or by inducing competitors to make room for the stronger competitor as a result of this strategic effect payoffs are in a rough sense more convex than in the case of no investment in a growth option when the strategic advantage is strong increased uncertainty encourages investment in growth options higher uncertainty means more opportunity rather than simply larger risk if the strategic effect is weak the reverse is true on the other hand an increase in systematic risk discourages the acquisition of growth options our results contradict the view that volatility is a strong disincentive for investment

optimal incentive contracts in the presence of career concerns theory and evidence this paper studies optimal incentive contracts when workers have career concerns concerns about the effects of current performance on future compensation we show that the optimal compensation contract optimizes total incentives the combination of the implicit incentives from career concerns and the explicit incentives from the compensation contract thus the explicit incentives from the optimal compensation contract should be strongest for workers close to retirement because career concerns are weakest for these workers we find empirical support for this prediction in the relation between chief executive compensation and stock market performance

a real options game of alliance timing decisions in biopharmaceutical research and development abstract in this article we examine the alliance timing trade off facing both pharmaceutical and biotech firms in a stochastic and competitive environment specifically we introduce a real options game rog where a pharmaceutical company can choose between two competing biotech firms by sequentially offering a licensing deal early or late in the new drug development process we find that when the alliance raises the drug market value significantly the agreement is signed late in the drug development process this suggests that the postponement effect implied by the use of real options prevails over the biotech firms competition effect which would instead play in favor of an early agreement for pre emption reasons when the alliance does not raise the drug market value significantly the optimal timing depends on the level of royalties retained by the pharmaceutical company in particular an early agreement is signed in the presence of a low level of royalties in this case indeed the competition effect becomes predominant because the pharmaceutical company can substantially reduce the upfront payment and thus the potential loss incurred if the biotech partner does not exercise her option to continue the new drug development process we also show that the alliance timing outcomes of our real options game considerably differ from those obtained when both parties use the net present value npv to assess their payoffs

the real bills doctrine versus the quantity theory a reconsideration two competing monetary policy prescriptions are analyzed within the context of overlapping generations models the real bills prescription is for unfettered private intermediation or central bank operations designed to produce the effects of such intermediation the quantity theory prescription in contrast is for restrictions on private intermediation designed to separate money from credit although our models are consistent with quantity theory predictions about money supply and price level behavior under these two policy prescriptions the models imply that the quantity theory prescription is not pareto optimal and the real bills prescription is

value functions for infinite period planning cost benefit and risk analysis studies that model tradeoffs between the present and the distant future by means of present value discounting have been criticized for according the future and thus future generations far too little importance this paper presents an alternative means of modeling tradeoffs between different periods that accords the future far more importance than present value discounting and that is no more difficult to apply the paper also presents a means of modeling the preference issue of concern for equity or stability between different periods

conjectural variations equilibrium in a mixed duopoly we study a mixed duopoly model in which a state owned public firm maximizing domestic social surplus and a private foreign firm compete under general enough assumptions we first justify the concept of conjectural variations equilibrium cve applied to the model by demonstrating concavity of the expected profit function of each agent next we establish existence and uniqueness results for the conjectural variations equilibrium in the described duopoly a particular case of a cve with constant influence conjecture coefficients is also examined

economic organization with limited communication this paper presents formal stylized representations of communication accounting systems oral assignment portable object written message and telecommunication systems are considered the environments that allow this formalization are characterized by spatial separation private information and a need to keep track of past actions transfers and shocks in environments that have spatial separation and private information beneficial multilateral arrangements can depend critically on agents ability to communicate to one another values of contemporary shocks and to keep track of histories of past transfers or past announced shocks this paper formalizes this idea and focuses on com

wealth and executive compensation using new data on the wealth of swedish ceos i show that higher wealth ceos receive stronger incentives since high wealth excluding own firm holdings implies low absolute risk aversion this is consistent with a risk aversion explanation to examine whether wealth is likely to proxy for power i use lagged wealth typically measured before the ceo was hired and the results remain for one of two incentive measures also the wealth incentive result is not stronger for ceos likely to face limited owner oversight finally wealth is unrelated to pay levels and is hence unlikely to proxy for skill the compensation of chief executives of large listed companies is often largely in the form of risky instruments such as shares and options since share prices are affected by many factors outside management control this exposes ceos to risk according to standard agency theory the risk inherent in incentive compensation should reduce optimal incentives looking across firms the evidence that volatile stock prices reduce incentives in actual compensation has been mixed see e g aggarwal and samwick 1999 core and guay 2001 and prendergast 2002 for different views the importance of risk for incentives is thus in dispute 1 this paper takes another look at ceo incentives exploiting variation in risk aversion rather than risk decreasing absolute risk aversion implies that a wealthy ceo is less risk averse than a similar same coefficient of relative risk aversion but less wealthy ceo wealth should therefore proxy for risk aversion wealth may also be related to ceo skill and power obviously using wealth variation empirically hinges on having adequate data on individual wealth i use swedish tax filings to construct a proxy of wealth in sweden tax authorities provide data on aggregate yearly income

the inconsistency of consistent conjectures abstract conjectural variation models have been criticized because firms are right for the wrong reasons and because possible equilibria are abundant lately several papers have attempted to meet these difficulties by some condition of consistency or rationality on the conjectural variation this paper shows that stronger versions of such conditions lead into paradoxes while the weaker forms are of little use in solving the conceived problems the original cournot assumption actually satisfies consistency enterions the problems with consistent conjectures illuminates fundmental problems with too demanding information assumptions like perfect foresight such assumptions may create non trivial structures of self reference

entrepreneurial orientation risk and incentives the case of franchising the standard principal agent model predicts a trade off in contract design between the protection against risk and incentive motivations distinguishing two types of risks we show that contrary to this traditional view the relationship between risk and incentives can be positive in franchise contracting this implies that the royalty rate decreases with the risk faced by the franchisee on the local market using a unique panel dataset combining french franchise and financial data we address this issue empirically alongside performance outcomes the data support the hypothesis of a negative relationship between risk and the royalty rate which contradicts the prediction of the standard agency theory furthermore our estimations provide evidence that chain performance increases with an adjusted royalty rate this paper has important implications for contract design showing that with increasing local market uncertainty and low risk aversion franchisors should reduce the royalty rate

the other side of the trade off the impact of risk on executive compensation the principal agent model of executive compensation is of central importance to the modern theory of the firm and corporate governance yet the exiting empirical evidence supporting it is quite wea

liquidity and asset prices a new monetarist approach abstract when lenders cannot force borrowers to repay debts assets are often pledged to secure loans in this paper borrowers lose collateral once they renege on debts and exclusion of defaulters occurs probabilistically with a higher probability implying better enforcement increased efficiency in enforcement reduces asset prices while raising loan to value ratios if the rise in loan to value ratios is the dominant effect aggregate liquidity and output increase with the advance in enforcement inflation raises the repayment cost by increasing the loan rate while raising the default cost through exclusion consequently inflation raises loan to value ratios and output only when enforcement is sufficiently efficient

mixed oligopoly cost reducing research and development and privatisation abstract we develop a mixed oligopoly model to examine the role of r d subsidies and evaluate the welfare effects of privatisation in solving the oligopoly model we propose a novel use of aggregative games techniques our analysis reveals that privatisation reduces the optimal r d subsidy furthermore privatisation improves social welfare but only when the number of firms is sufficiently large implementing solely a subsidy to r d does not lead to a privatisation neutrality theorem or irrelevance result

staging of venture capital investment a real options analysis this paper uses contingent claims analysis to investigate the staging decision of venture capitalist vc in a principal agent framework venture capital investment opportunities are modeled as real options with multiple volatilities and the entrepreneur s incentive is assumed to maximize the probability of getting funded in the next financing round two celebrated formulae in the option pricing literature are generalized to evaluate these real options we find that staging not only gives the vc a waiting option but also mitigates the agency problem of the entrepreneur undertaking too conservative activities moreover we find that the vc tends to stage her investment when the expected growth rate of the venture s market value is lower however the risk free interest rate is not an important factor in the staging decision our model also provides a good explanation for existing empirical evidence on the staging of venture capital investment

the tenuous trade off between risk and incentives empirical work testing for a negative trade off between risk and incentives has not had much success the data suggest a positive relationship between measures of uncertainty and incentives rather than the posited negative trade off i argue that the existing literature fails to account for an important effect of uncertainty on incentives through the allocation of responsibility to employees when workers operate in certain settings firms are content to assign tasks to workers and monitor their inputs by contrast when the situation is more uncertain they delegate responsibility to workers but to constrain their discretion base compensation on observed output

executive compensation and principal agent theory the empirical literature on executive compensation generally fails to specify a model of executive pay on which to base and test hypotheses regarding its determinants in contrast this paper analy

stochastic competitive entries and dynamic pricing abstract how should firms price new products when they do not know the timing nor the nature of the next competitive entry to guide managers pricing decisions in such contexts we propose a dynamic pricing model with two types of randomly timed entry i e imitative and innovative the characterization of the equilibrium strategies reveals how optimal prices vary with the manager s knowledge about the timing of future competitive entries we show that price skimming is not always optimal when entry dates are unknown to managers everything else equal we demonstrate that the randomness of competitive entries make forward looking managers to choose constant prices even though the characteristics of the market would have justified skimming the demand in the normal course moreover we show that the constant pricing policy remains optimal even when the incumbent s optimal pricing strategy influences the probability of facing a competitive entry finally we find that uncertainty does not necessarily hurt firms profits

the venture capital entry model on game options with jump diffusion process abstract this paper aims to apply game options to construct the optimal decision making and management tool for venture capital vc firms this model emphasizes the inferences with game options on the market structures formed by different competition and investment strategies of the two vc firms to reflect the investment returns these market structures are classified into an entry deterred game specific monopoly a leader s dominated strategies duopoly and simultaneous investment it is considered how to select investment timing to avoid any potential competitive threats in order to provide the optimal expected threshold values for the investment decisions of vc firms

optimal executive compensation when firm size follows geometric brownian motion this paper studies a continuous time agency model in which the agent controls the drift of the geometric brownian motion firm size the changing firm size generates partial incentives analogous to awarding the agent equity shares according to her continuation payoff when the agent is as patient as investors performance based stock grants implement the optimal contract our model generates a leverage effect on the equity returns and implies that the agency problem is more severe for smaller firms that the empirical evidence shows that grants compensation are largely based on the ceo s historical performance rather than current performance lends support to our model

testing agency theory with entrepreneur effort and wealth we develop a principal agent model in an entrepreneurial setting and test the model s predictions using unique data on entrepreneurial effort and wealth in privately held firms accounting for unobserved firm heterogeneity using instrumental variables techniques we find that entrepreneurial ownership shares increase with outside wealth and decrease with firm risk effort increases with ownership and effort increases firm performance the magnitude of the effects in the cross section of firms suggests that agency costs may help explain why entrepreneurs concentrate large fractions of their wealth in firm equity

open innovation a real option to restore value to the biopharmaceutical r d abstract the pharmaceutical landscape has changed and new business models based on alliances are increasingly being adopted in this industry biotechnology advances have pushed this development and pooling complementary resources coming from incumbents and newcomers is a key skill to succeed these are the premises for a quick spread of the open innovation oi paradigm in this industry rd to achieve this goal the authors propose a closed form model that is easy to implement to evaluate the oi initiative for selecting an optimal rd i e licensing in or not and the self financing policy the proposed model can be easily implemented into a spreadsheet and the inputs needed to run it are usually requested to evaluate projects using the most used net present value based methods moreover some parameters of the model allow strategic aspects to be considered for example the nature of the project core non core the impending project phase and the risk sharing opportunity the results of the developed numerical example show that the selected portfolio is well balanced in terms of development stages core non core therapeutic areas and licensing in an inbound open innovation solution is preferred in the case of products at their early stages of development

are ceos really paid like bureaucrats a common view is that there is little correlation between firm performance and ceo pay using a new fifteen year panel data set of ceos in the largest publicly traded u s companies we document a strong relationship between firm performance and ceo compensation this relationship is generated almost entirely by changes in the value of ceo holdings of stock and stock options in addition we show that both the level of ceo compensation and the sensitivity of compensation to firm performance have risen dramatically since 1980 largely because of increases in stock option grants

evaluating pharmaceutical r d under technical and economic uncertainty this study sets up a compound option approach for evaluating pharmaceutical r d investment projects in the presence of technical and economic uncertainties technical uncertainty is modeled as a poisson jump that allows for failure and thus abandonment of the drug development economic uncertainty is modeled as a standard diffusion process which incorporates both up and downward shocks practical application of this method is emphasized through a case analysis we show that both uncertainties have a positive impact on the r d option value moreover from the sensitivity analysis we find that the sensitivity of the option with respect to economic uncertainty and market introduction cost decreases when technical uncertainty increases

manipulation and equity based compensation economists have long argued that a strong linkage between compensation and performance is essential for resolving the agency problem created by the separation of ownership and control in particular michael c jensen and kevin j murphy 1990 were very influential in giving impetus to the view that such incentives were in need of strengthening compared to accounting benchmarks the stock price is more forward looking and it is responsive to all value relevant information including informal and unverifiable items of news this makes stock and or option awards an important part of optimal incentives and constitutes a primary reason for seeking a public listing as argued by bengt holmstrom and jean tirole 1993 until recently however theories of optimal executive compensation have generally ignored the possibility that the stock price can be manipulated or falsified it is becoming increasingly clear that this is an important issue in a spate of recent scandals companies have misled the investing public by vastly overstating their profitability and prospects and substantive restatements of company accounts have become increasingly commonplace a growing body of empirical evidence suggests that executive pay in its current form may be at least in part responsible recent studies finding a link between unusual movements in performance measures such as accounting yardsticks and publicly disclosed price sensitive information and compensation include daniel bergstresser and thomas philippon 2006 natasha burns and simi kedia 2006 and peng and roell forthcoming thus the benefits of stock based incentives should be weighed against their side effects this paper models optimal executive compensation in a setting where managers are in a position to influence the public perception of manipulation and equity based compensation

an anticipative hyperbolic discount utility on intertemporal decision making discount utility is facilitated to scrutinize human decision behaviors for different points in time under the consideration of time preference recent studies are extended from two basic models which are the exponential and the hyperbolic discount models and the more popular hyperbolic discount model is well recognized for resolving the effects of preference reversal and is less steeply discounting than the exponential discount model however to enhance the capability of explaining intertemporal decision making behavior an anticipative hyperbolic discount utility model was proposed which revised the conventional hyperbolic discount utility by introducing the anticipative parameters under the consideration of anticipation of future gains or losses an empirical investigation was employed to validate the effectiveness of the proposed anticipative hyperbolic discounting utility model which was able to empirically go beyond the traditional hyperbolic discounting utility model also the proposed anticipative hyperbolic model is capable of dealing with the anomalies of preference reverse and framing effects

real options valuation for a biotechnology company many companies in the biotechnology industry have significant valuations despite having no product revenue because their products are in early stages of development in the past 10 15 years investors have bid up the stock prices of companies showing promise of developing a blockbuster drug we explain the decision tree method and binomial lattice method which adds a growth option and use them to value a biotechnology company agouron pharmaceuticals as the sum of the values of its drug development projects the growth option was added because the development of an initial new molecular entity nme is similar to purchasing a call option on the value of a subsequent nme we compare our computed values of agouron with actual market values at selected points in time during the development of agouron s viracept a drug used to treat hiv positive patients

payment transactions instruments and systems a survey the payments literature ranges from theoretical general equilibrium models to practical payment issues related to the day to day operation of various national networks for the transfer of money it is an area where economic theory and institutional structure are often closely intertwined and it is currently undergoing significant change shifting from costly paper based systems to technologically advanced electronic payments the extant literature is surveyed here with the aim of integrating the various strands of payment research which have been largely pursued separately in addition we present newly available data to illustrate and investigate a number of underdeveloped areas in this literature 1998 elsevier science b v all rights reserved

discount rates inferred from decisions an experimental study two hundred and four students of economics and finance participated in an intertemporal choice experiment which manipulated three dimensions in a 4 4 4 factorial design scenario postponing a receipt postponing a payment expediting a receipt expediting a payment time delay 0 5 1 2 and 4 years and size of cashflow 40 200 1000 and 5000 individual discount rates were inferred from the responses and then used to test competitively four hypotheses regarding the behavior of discount rates the classical hypothesis asserting that the discount rate is uniform across scenarios time delays and sums of cashflow was flatly rejected a market segmentation approach was found lacking the results support an implicit risk hypothesis according to which delayed consequences are associated with an implicit risk value and an added compensation hypothesis which asserts that individuals require compensation for a change in their financial position

habits and the anomalies in intertemporal choice this paper analyzes a model of discounted utility under habit formation habit formation means that utility in each period is determined by the difference between the received outcome and the customary outcome at that point in time preferences are rational in the sense that the decision maker correctly anticipates the habit formation process and behaves in a dynamically consistent manner i e plans are truly carried out the purpose is to demonstrate that this generalization of the discounted utility model accounts jointly and in a meaningful way for the most striking anomalies with respect to classical discounted utility theory the common difference effect is explained first this effect also called decreasing impatience effect has usually been viewed as evidence against exponential discounting then the frequently observed preference for increasing sequences of outcomes is examined such preference under the traditional discounted utility model would be regarded as a paradoxical case of negative discounting a discussion of the descriptive prescriptive and normative values of the model is included

game theoretic models of mixed oligopoly abstract in this paper we review various models that have been proposed for the study of mixed oligopoly that is markets in which private and public firm compete on equal basis using only market instruments

estimating the value of employee stock option portfolios and their sensitivities to price and volatility the costs associated with compiling data on employee stock option portfolios is a substantial obstacle in investigating the impact of stock options on managerial incentives accounting choice financing decisions and the valuation of equity we present an accurate method of estimating option portfolio value and the sensitivities of option portfolio value to stock price and stock return volatility that is easily implemented using data from only the current year s proxy statement or annual report this method can be applied to either executive stock option portfolios or to firm wide option plans in broad samples of actual and simulated ceo option portfolios we show that these proxies capture more than 99 of the variation in option portfolio value and sensitivities sensitivity analysis indicates that the degree of bias in these proxies varies with option portfolio characteristics and is most severe in samples of ceos with a large proportion of out of the money options however the proxies explanatory power remains above 95 in all subsamples

corporate performance and managerial remuneration an empirical analysis abstract economic theories of efficient compensation predict a positive relationship between executive pay and corporate performance and yet efforts to document this relationship have been largely unsuccessful in this paper we argue that previous cross sectional studies have omitted important variables which seriously bias their results using data that focus on individual executives over time we find that executive compensation is strongly positively related to corporate performance as measured by shareholder return and growth in firm sales the results are robust to the stock market performance measure utilized

entry exit and diffusion with learning by doing early entry has the advantage of higher revenues per unit of output early on late entry has the benefit of learning from the experience of earlier entrants and hence lower production costs the advantages are balanced off in a continuous time perfect foresight equilibrium competition generates s shaped diffusion and staggered entry and exit a monopolist will innovate less than a competitive industry but the innovation that he does do he will do sooner copyright 1989 by american economic association

risk aversion performance pay and the principal agent problem this paper calculates numerical solutions to the principal agent problem and compares the results to the stylized facts of ceo compensation the numerical predictions come from parameterizing the models of grossman and hart and of holmstrom and milgrom while the correct incentives for a ceo can greatly enhance a firm s performance providing such incentives need not be expensive for many parameter values ceo compensation need increase only by about 10 for every 1 000 of additional shareholder value for some values the amount is 0 003 cents

lower salaries and no options on the optimal structure of executive pay we estimate a standard principal agent model with constant relative risk aversion and lognormal stock prices for a sample of 598 us ceos the model is widely used in the compensation literature but it predicts that almost all of the ceos in our sample should hold no stock options instead ceos should have lower base salaries and receive additional shares in their companies for a typical value of relative risk aversion almost half of the ceos in our sample would be required to purchase additional stock in their companies from their private savings the model predicts contracts that would reduce average compensation costs by 20 while providing the same incentives and the same utility to ceos we investigate a number of extensions and modi cations of the standard model but nd none of them to be satisfactory we conclude that the standard principal agent model typically used in the literature cannot rationalize observed contracts one reason may be that executive pay contracts are suboptimal

anticipation and the valuation of delayed consumption this paper presents a model of intertemporal choice that incorporates savoring and dread i e utility from anticipat ion of delayed consumption the model explains why an individual with positive time preference may delay desirable outcomes or get unpleas ant outcomes over with quickly contrary to the prediction of convent ional formulations of intertemporal choice implications of savoring and dread for savings behavior empirical estimation of discount rate s and public policy efforts to combat myopic behavior are explored the model provides an explanation for common violations of the indepe ndence axiom as applied to intertemporal choice copyright 1987 by royal economic society

dynamic compensation contracts with private savings this article studies a dynamic agency problem in which a risk averse agent can save privately in the optimal contract i cash compensations exhibit downward rigidity to failures ii permanent pay raises occur when the agent s historical performance is sufficiently good iii and when the agent is dismissed due to poor performance he walks away with severance pay to support his post firing consumption at the current compensation level thus the theory can simultaneously explain the popularity of optionslike compensation contracts and the increasing incidence of forced turnovers with sizeable severance pay jel d86 j31 j33

aggregation and linearity in the provision of intertemporal incentives we consider the problem of providing incentives over time for an agent with constant absolute risk aversion the optimal compensation scheme is found to be a linear function of a vector of n accounts which count the number of times that each of the n kinds of observable events occurs the number n is independent of the number of time periods so the accounts may entail substantial aggregation in a continuous time version of the problem the agent controls the drift rate of a vector of accounts that is subject to frequent small random fluctuations the solution is as if the problem were the static one in which the agent controls only the mean of a multivariate normal distribution and the principal is constrained to use a linear compensation rule if the principal can observe only coarser linear aggregates such as revenues costs or profits the optimal compensation scheme is then a linear function of those aggregates the combination of exponential utility normal distributions and linear compensation schemes makes computations and comparative statics easy to do as we illustrate we interpret our linearity results as deriving in part from the richness of the agent s strategy space which makes it possible for the agent to undermine and exploit complicated nonlinear functions of the accounting aggregates

mixed oligopoly with consistent conjectures abstract in this paper we consider a model of mixed oligopoly with conjectural variations equilibrium cve the agents conjectures concern the price variations depending upon their production output s increase or decrease we establish existence and uniqueness results for the conjectural variations equilibrium called an exterior equilibrium for any set of feasible conjectures to introduce the notion of an interior equilibrium we develop a consistency criterion for the conjectures referred to as influence coefficients and prove the existence theorem for the interior equilibrium understood as a cve with consistent conjectures to prepare the base for the extension of our results to the case of non differentiable demand functions we also investigate the behavior of the consistent conjectures in dependence upon a parameter representing the demand function s derivative with respect to the market price

a continuous time version of the principal agent problem this paper describes a new continuous time principal agent model in which the output is a diffusion process with drift determined by the agent s unobserved effort the risk averse agent receives consumption continuously the optimal contract based on the agent s continuation value as a state variable is computed by a new method using a differential equation during employment the output path stochastically drives the agent s continuation value until it reaches a point that triggers retirement quitting replacement or promotion the paper explores how the dynamics of the agent s wages and effort as well as the optimal mix of short term and long term incentives depend on the contractual environment the understanding of dynamic incentives is central in economics how do companies motivate their workers through piece rates bonuses and promotions how is income inequality connected with productivity investment and economic growth how do financial contracts and capital structure give incentives to the managers of a corporation the methods and results of this paper provide important insights to many such questions this paper introduces a continuous time principal agent model that focuses on the dynamic properties of optimal incentive provision we identify factors that make the agent s wages increase or decrease over time we examine the degree to which current and future outcomes motivate the agent we provide conditions under which the agent eventually reaches retirement in the optimal contract we also investigate how the costs of creating incentives and the dynamic properties of the optimal contract depend on the contractual environment the agent s outside options the difficulty of replacing the agent and the opportunities for promotion our new dynamic insights are possible due to the technical advantages of continuous time methods over the traditional discrete time ones continuous time leads to a much simpler computational procedure to find the optimal contract by solving an ordinary differential equation this equation highlights the factors that determine optimal consumption and effort the dynamics of the agent s career path are naturally described by the drift and volatility of the agent s pay offs the geometry of solutions to the differential equation allows for easy comparisons to see how the agent s wages effort and incentives depend on the contractual environment finally continuous time highlights many essential features of the optimal contract including the agent s eventual retirement in our benchmark model a risk averse agent is tied to a risk neutral principal forever after employment starts the agent influences output by his continuous unobservable effort input the principal sees only the output a brownian motion with a drift that depends on the agent s effort the agent dislikes effort and enjoys consumption we assume that the agent s utility function has the income effect that is as the agent s income increases it becomes costlier to compensate him for the effort also we assume that the agent s utility of consumption is bounded from below

managerial attributes and executive compensation we study the role of firm and manager specific heterogeneities in executive compensation we decompose the variation in executive compensation and find that time invariant firm and especially manager fixed effects explain a majority of the variation in executive pay we then show that in many settings it is important to include fixed effects to mitigate potential omitted variable bias furthermore we find that compensation fixed effects are significantly correlated with management styles i e manager fixed effects in corporate policies finally the method used in the article has a number of potential applications in financial economics the author 2011 published by oxford university press on behalf of the society for financial studies all rights reserved for permissions please e mail journals permissions oup com oxford university press

the option value of advanced r d existing tools for making r d investment decisions cannot properly capture the option value in r d since many new products are identified as failures during the r d stages the possibility of refraining from market introduction may add a significant value to the npv of the r d project this paper presents new theoretical insight by developing a stochastic jump amplitude model in a real setting the option value of the proposed model depends on the expected number of jumps and the expected size of the jumps in a particular business the model is verified with empirical knowledge of current research in the field of multimedia at philips corporate research this way the gap between real option theory and the practice of decision making with respect to investments in r d is diminished

investments of uncertain cost abstract this paper examines irreversible investment decisions when projects take time to complete and are subject to two types of cost uncertainty the first is technical uncertainty i e uncertainty over the physical difficulty of completing a project which is only resolved as the investment proceeds the second is input cost uncertainty i e uncertainty over the prices of construction inputs or over government regulations affecting construction costs which is external to the firm these two types of uncertainty have very different effects on the investment decision a simple investment rule is derived that maximizes firm value and is used to analyze the decision to start or continue building a nuclear power plant during the 1980s

the dependence of pay performance sensitivity on the size of the firm i analyze the relationship between firm size and the extent to which executive compensation depends on the wealth of the firm s shareholders i use a simple agency model to motivate an econometric model of this relationship estimating this model on chief executive officer ceo compensation data using nonlinear least squares i determine that pay performance sensitivity as defined by jensen and murphy 1990b appears to be approximately inversely proportional to the square root of firm size however measured i also analyze the properties of pay performance sensitivity for teams of executives working for the same firm and show it to have similar properties as ceo pay performance sensitivity

late stage pharmaceutical r d and pricing policies under two stage regulation 2016 elsevier b v we present a model combining the two regulatory stages relevant to the approval of a new health technology the authorisation of its commercialisation and the insurer s decision about whether to reimburse its cost we show that the degree of uncertainty concerning the true value of the insurer s maximum willingness to pay for a unit increase in effectiveness has a non monotonic impact on the optimal price of the innovation the firm s expected profit and the optimal sample size of the clinical trial a key result is that there exists a range of values of the uncertainty parameter over which a reduction in uncertainty benefits the firm the insurer and patients we consider how different policy parameters may be used as incentive mechanisms and the incentives to invest in r d for marginal projects such as those targeting rare diseases the model is calibrated using data on a new treatment for cystic fibrosis

money barter and the optimality of legal restrictions we examine a decentralized monetary economy in which households can use a means of exchange barter or gold other than fiat money the alternative means of exchange may drive out money even if monetary exchange pareto dominates legal restrictions prohibiting other means of exchange may therefore be necessary with stochastic preferences households may use barter to supplement monetary purchases when they have an unexpectedly high demand however this may drive down the value of money in all states so low that households are again better off with fiat money alone the paper provides both stochastic and nonstochastic examples in which eliminating markets for goods or assets that compete with fiat money improves welfare

limited commitment money and credit abstract this paper studies limited commitment and adverse selection in an economy in which private liabilities inside money can be used as instruments of intertemporal trade the results suggest that in conjunction with adverse selection the limited commitment problem may affect the behavior of intrinsically higher quality debtors more severely than lower quality ones nonetheless a credit economy may function better when both problems are present than under limited commitment alone adding a fixed amount of money eases frictions associated with the credit market journal of economic literature classification numbers d8 e0 e5

real options in strategic investment games between two asymmetric firms abstract this paper examines strategic investment games between two firms that compete for optimal entry in a project that generates uncertain revenue flows under asymmetry on both the sunk cost of investment and revenue flows of the two competing firms we investigate the value of real investment options and strategic interaction of investment decisions compared to earlier models that only allow for asymmetry on sunk cost our model demonstrates a richer set of strategic interactions of entry decisions we provide a complete characterization of pre emptive dominant and simultaneous equilibriums by analyzing the relative value of leader s and follower s optimal investment thresholds in a duopoly market with negative externalities a firm may reduce loss of real options value by selecting appropriate pre emptive entry when one firm has a dominant advantage over its competitor both the dominant firm and dominated firm enter at their respective leader s and follower s optimal thresholds when the pre emptive thresholds of both firms happen to coincide the two firms enter simultaneously under positive externalities firms do not compete to lead

the effect of risk on the ceo market this article presents a market equilibrium model of ceo assignment pay and incentives under risk aversion and moral hazard each of the three outcomes can be summarized by a single closed form equation in the presence of moral hazard assignment is distorted from positive assortative matching on firm size as firms with higher risk or disutility choose less talented ceos such firms also pay higher salaries in the cross section but economywide increases in risk or the disutility of being a ceo do not affect pay the strength of incentives depends only on the disutility of effort and is independent of risk and risk aversion if the ceo can affect firm risk incentives rise and are increasing in risk and risk aversion we calibrate the losses from various forms of poor corporate governance such as failures in monitoring and inefficiencies in ceo assignment jel g34 j33 this article presents a market equilibrium model of ceo assignment pay and incentives risk averse managers of different talents are hired in a competitive market by heterogeneous firms which vary in their size risk and level of effort required the level of pay drives the assignment of talent to firms the strength of incentives induces the efficient effort level and is determined by an optimal contracting approach our main contribution is to incorporate risk into a ceo market equilibrium in a tractable manner a large empirical literature has shown that risk is a firstorder determinant of compensation contracts demsetz and lehn 1985 garen 1994 core and guay 1999 oyer and schaefer 2004 peters 2009 peters and wagner 2009 but most theories assume risk neutrality this assumption is

mixed oligopoly and spatial agglomeration abstract we investigate a mixed market where a state owned welfare maximizing public firm competes against profit maximizing private firms we use a circular city model with quantity setting competition in contrast to a pure market case discussed by pal 1998a spatial agglomeration of private firms always appears in equilibrium all private firms locate at the same point and the public firm locates at the opposite side we also find that this equilibrium pattern of the location is second best provided that output of each private firm cannot be controlled by the social planner jel classification h42 l13 oligopole mixte et agglomeration spatiale les auteurs examinent un marche mixte ou une entreprise publique possedee par l etat et cherchant a maximiser le niveau de bien etre est en concurrence avec des entreprises privees qui cherchent a maximiser leurs profits on utilise un modele de cite circulaire ou la concurrence se fait en choisissant la quantite produite en contraste avec le cas du marche parfait discute par pal 1998a l agglomeration spatiale des entreprises privees parait etre en equilibre toutes les entreprises privees se localisent au meme point et l entreprise publique se localise du cote oppose il appert que ce pattern d equilibre de localisation est un equilibre de second ordre compte tenu du fait que la production de chaque entreprise privee ne peut etre controlee par le planificateur social