Can incentives mitigate student overconfidence at grade forecasts?

Research shows that college students exhibit bias in their forecasts of exam performance. Most students are overconfident in their forecasts, academically weaker students are the most overconfident, and top-performing students are underconfident. The literature identifies negative repercussions of these biases, including inadequate preparation for exams. A recurring attribute of this literature is the absence of meaningful incentives for students to forecast accurately. We implement an extra credit scheme to incentivize accurate forecasts. Depending on how forecast bias is measured, the scheme mitigates bias by top-performing students and marginally mitigates bias by other students. Our results have several implications. First, we illustrate an extra credit tool instructors can use to incentivize students to make more thoughtful assessments of their future exam performance. Second, we show how the association between incentives and forecast bias differs across student groups. Finally, we show that results in this literature are sensitive to how bias is measured.     

CEO Risk‐taking Incentives and Bank Loan Syndicate Structure

This paper investigates the effects of a borrowing firm's CEO risk‐taking incentives on the structure of the firm's syndicated loans. When CEO risk‐taking incentives are high, syndicates are structured to facilitate better due diligence and monitoring efforts. These syndicates have a smaller number of total lenders and are more concentrated, and lead arrangers will retain a greater portion of the loan. Moreover, CEO risk‐taking incentives have a lesser effect on the syndicate structure when lead arrangers have a good reputation and a prior lending relationship with a borrowing firm, while they have a greater effect on the syndicate structure when borrowing firms have low information transparency, are financially distressed or have low growth prospects.     

IFRS adoption,reporting incentives and financial reporting quality in private firms

This study examines financial reporting quality (FRQ) effects around voluntary International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) adoptions by German private firms across two important dimensions, earnings quality and disclosure practices. To capture differences in the motivations for IFRS adoptions, we identify four different types of IFRS adopting firms based on a comprehensive set of firm characteristics. We observe earnings quality improvements around IFRS adoptions primarily for one type of firm, which is young, fast growing and seeking access to public equity markets. Using a matched sample of private German GAAP and IFRS reporting firms, we find some evidence suggesting that IFRS also contribute to higher earnings quality. Recognizing that our earnings quality metrics are only incomplete measures of FRQ, we also compare the disclosure practices of IFRS and German GAAP firms. We find that all IFRS firm types disclose significantly more information in their financial reports and show a higher propensity to publish their financial reports voluntarily on the corporate website. Our findings indicate that failure to identify earnings quality changes around IFRS adoption cannot be automatically interpreted as IFRS adoption having no effect on the FRQ of (private) firms. Collectively, our results suggest that both incentives and accounting standards shape private firms’ FRQ.     

Bank credit,public financial incentives,tax financial incentives and export performance during the global financial crisis

This paper investigates the extent to which access to credit, public financial incentives and tax financial incentives affect export performance using the EU-EFIGE/Bruegel-Unicredit data set, covering firms within Austria, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Hungary and the UK during the 2008 global financial crisis. The results show that firms receiving credit or benefiting from public financial incentives display higher export intensity and export a greater number of product lines compared to those that did not, especially in countries with better access to credit and/or financial incentives during the crisis. Further, firms benefiting from tax financial incentives show a better export performance compared to those that did not, regardless of the degree of access to credit and/or financial incentives in the country in which they operate. In addition, the effect of access to credit and public finance incentives on export performance is found to be size-dependent, while the effect of tax financial incentives is not. We suggest that governments should promote publicly funded financial incentives along with conventional schemes, such as R&D subsidies, to promote exports, particularly during a period of financial crisis.     

Incentives and teacher effort

Few would contest that teachers are a very important determinant of how much students learn in school, and how to improve teacher performance has been the focus of lively policy debate in both rich and poor countries. This paper examines how teacher incentives, both pecuniary and non‐pecuniary, correlate with teacher effort. Using school survey data from Lao PDR, we estimate measures of teacher effort, including the number of hours that teachers spend preparing for classes and teacher provision of private tutoring outside of class hours, which are not the typical measures used in previous research. Estimation results fit well under the standard labour supply framework and indicate that greater teacher effort is associated with non‐pecuniary incentives such as more teacher autonomy over teaching materials and monitoring as measured by the existence of an active parent – teacher association and the ability of school principals to dismiss teachers. Methodologically, this paper provides a detailed derivation of a simultaneous OLS‐probit model with school random effects that can jointly estimate teacher work hours and tutoring provision.     

CEO Inside Debt Incentives and Corporate Tax Sheltering

This paper examines the relation between CEO inside debt holdings (pension benefits and deferred compensation) and corporate tax sheltering. Because inside debt holdings are generally unsecured and unfunded liabilities of the firm, CEOs are exposed to risk similar to that faced by outside creditors. As such, theory (Jensen and Meckling [1976]) suggests that inside debt holdings negatively impact CEO risk‐appetite. To the extent that corporate tax shelters are likely to result in high cash flow volatility in the future, we expect that inside debt holdings will curb CEOs from engaging in tax shelter transactions. Consistent with the prediction, we document a negative association between CEO inside debt holdings and tax sheltering. Additional analyses suggest that the effect of inside debt on tax sheltering is more (less) pronounced in the presence of high default risk and liquidity threats (cash‐out options in pension packages). Overall, our results highlight the importance of investigating the implication of CEO debt‐like compensation for corporate tax policies.     

The Performance Effect of Feedback Frequency and Detail: Evidence from a Field Experiment in Customer Satisfaction

This paper presents the results from a field experiment that examines the effects of nonfinancial performance feedback on the behavior of professionals working for an insurance repair company. We vary the frequency (weekly and monthly) and the level of detail of the feedback that the 800 professionals receive. Contrary to what we would expect if these professionals conformed to the model of the Bayesian decision maker, more (and more frequent) information does not always help improve performance. In fact, we find that professionals achieve the best outcomes when they receive detailed but infrequent (monthly) feedback. The treatment groups with frequent feedback, regardless of how detailed it is, perform no better than the control group (with monthly and aggregate information). The results are consistent with the information in the latest feedback report being most salient and professionals in the weekly treatments overweighting their most recent performance, hampering their ability to learn.     

CEO激励对我国商业银行风险承担的影响——来自中国上市银行的实证分析

以中国上市银行为样本,从中选取了2007-2015年的经营数据,讨论CEO激励对银行风险承担的影响机制。研究发现：①CEO薪酬激励增加了银行的风险承担水平,具有行政经历的CEO会削弱薪酬激励在银行风险承担中的提升作用。②CEO的股权激励有助于降低银行风险承担水平,同时,具有行政经历的CEO会提升股权激励对银行风险承担的负向影响。③进一步研究讨论发现,CEO薪酬激励与银行风险承担之间呈现非线性的“倒U型”关系。     

Stakeholder incentives and reforms in China's state-owned enterprises: A common-property theory

We argue that state-owned enterprise reform has failed in China, because incentive mechanisms that confront the key stakeholders did not elicit efficient behavior. Although incentive mechanisms were intended to elicit more effort, incentives became de facto improper because of a number of developments. This paper analyzes alternative sharing or incentive systems and highlights the interdependency among property rights, incentives, and enforcement. A common-property model is put forward to analyze recent reforms and to show that alternative property right assignments have complex and diverse configurations of positive and negative externalities. Incentive mechanisms that favor more equal distribution are the most inefficient, whereas those that differentiate among heterogeneous stakeholders based on effective, rather than actual, effort are more promising. An ideal arrangement that combines equal sharing and proportional effort is proposed.     

Tax and green transport plans: a survey of UK experience

The widespread adoption of Green Transport Plans (GTPs) by employers has become an important aim of the UK government transport policy as it tries to find ways of reducing transport demand. However, the tax treatment of employee benefits that form part of many GTPs has been identified by the government and others as a potential barrier to their adoption. Based on telephone interviews with employers and meetings with tax and transport experts, this paper confirms this perception. It also explains precisely how tax forms a barrier to GTP implementation, reviews the approaches taken to this problem in three other countries and makes outline proposals for reform and further research.