EBITDA and Managers' Investment and Leverage Choices

EBITDA is a commonly used performance measure for (i) valuation, (ii) debt contracting, and (iii) executive compensation. The widespread use of EBITDA by stakeholders may induce managers to focus their attention on EBITDA. Since EBITDA excludes various expenses, managers who fixate on EBITDA may underweight the excluded expenses when determining their firms' investments in capital and leverage levels. I find that managers who fixate on EBITDA overinvest in capital and overlever their firm relative to their industry peers. These results are robust to alternative proxies for managers' focus on EBITDA and alternative specifications. I also find that firms whose managers focus on EBITDA have weaker operating performance, which is attributed to higher depreciation expense. My primary proxy for managers' focus on EBITDA is whether they choose to disclose EBITDA in annual earnings announcements. I find that the use of EBITDA in setting executive compensation, the prevalence of EBITDA estimates by analysts, and the use of EBITDA‐based covenants in firms' debt contracts are all positively associated with the propensity to disclose EBITDA in earnings announcements. I find weaker evidence of opportunistic motives explaining EBITDA disclosure. These results are consistent with managers disclosing EBITDA to portray to investors that it is a metric they seek to maximize. Overall, this study suggests that while EBITDA is a widely used metric, there is a systematic cost to using this measure—it provides managers with incentives to overinvest in capital and to acquire excessive debt.     

Demand for investment in productive and financial capital

The paper deals with an entrepreneur who operates in imperfect capital markets, making rational decisions about productive and financial investment. Using the economic rule that the allocation of assets between productive and financial purposes is carried out according to the equality of the marginal productivity and the marginal factor costs of debt, the paper analyses the factors which determine the size of the firm, the size of debt, and the optimal dynamic path.     

Social accounting: A Swedish attempt

A new approach to social accounting is outlined and its implementation in a major Swedish company described. The accounting system is based on a goal oriented model, with explicit consideration being given to the different interests of the different organization participants. The theoretical and practical bases and problems of the approach are discussed and an English Language translation of the social accounting report is appended.     

Choosing a digital content strategy: How much should be free?

Advertising supported content sampling is ubiquitous in online markets for digital information goods. Yet, little is known about the profit impact of sampling when it serves the dual purpose of disclosing content quality and generating advertising revenue. This paper proposes an analytical framework to study the optimal content strategy for online publishers and shows how it is determined by characteristics of both the content market and the advertising market. The strategy choice is among a paid content strategy, a sampling strategy, and a free content strategy, which follow from the publisher's decisions concerning the size of the sample and the price of the paid content. We show that a key driver of the strategy choice is how sampling affects the prior expectations of consumers, who learn about content quality from the inspection of the free samples. Surprisingly, we find that it can be optimal for the publisher to generate advertising revenue by offering free samples even when sampling reduces both prior quality expectations and content demand. In addition, we show that it can be optimal for the publisher to refrain from revealing quality through free samples when advertising effectiveness is low and content quality is high. To illustrate, we relate our framework to the newspaper industry, where the sampling strategy is known as the “metered model.”     

A policy response to a downside of the integration of economies: An impossibility theorem

Recent research shows that the merger of economies increases aggregate stress. This paper shows that there is no income distribution policy which will ensure that the wellbeing of the individuals belonging to merging economies does not fall below their pre-merger level.     

Inventories,credit transactions,and the marginal effective tax rate

It is observed that marginal effective tax rates (METR), as conventionally calculated, can only consider working capital requirements to a limited extent. A formula is derived to incorporate inventory requirements into the calculation and, via a numerical example, it is shown that such an incorporation can radically alter METRs from those conventionally calculated. The analysis is extended to credit transactions without affecting the above conclusion. Thus, if METRs are to be used as a means of evaluating the effects of tax policy on the incentive to invest, working capital requirements need to be explicitly allowed for.