Capital budgeting and compensation with asymmetric information and moral hazard

Abstract

We consider optimal capital allocation and managerial compensation mechanisms for decentralized firms when division managers have an incentive to misrepresent project quality and to minimize privately costly but value-enhancing effort. We show that in the optimal mechanism firms always underinvest in capital relative to a naive application of the net present value (NPV) rule. We make a number of novel cross-sectional predictions about the severity of the underinvestment problem and the composition of managerial compensation contracts. We also find that firms will optimally give greater performance-based pay (at the expense of fixed wages) to managers of higher quality projects to mitigate the incentive for managers to overstate project quality. Managers may thus receive greater performance-based pay because they manage higher quality projects, not that greater performance-based pay causes firm value to increase. © 2001 Elsevier Science S.A.