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By designing remuneration schemes based on a bonus rewarding specific firm-level outcomes, the owners|shareholders of a firm can manipulate the behavior of their managers. In practice, different bonus anchors take center stage: some are profit-based, others use sales as the key yardstick and still different ones focus on relative performance vis-�-vis a peer group. In this paper, we focus on the impact of remuneration schemes on firm-level profitability. The profit effect is investigated for (all possible combinations of) four bonus systems using delegation games. In the context of a linear Cournot model for two or three firms, we model a two- or three-stage decision structure where, in the first stage (or first two stages), an owner decides on the bonus system for his manager and where, in the final stage, the manager takes the daily output decision for her firm. It appears that the bonus system based on relative (profits) performance is superior throughout. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Modern corporate governance codes include clauses requiring the disclosure of managerial compensation. Such codes have been installed to protect shareholders' interests. In this paper, we explore the impact of such disclosure on consumer welfare. We consider two-stage delegation games in which owner-shareholders negotiate about compensation with their managers in the game's first stage. At the end of the first stage, the managerial compensation contract outcomes of the bargaining process are publicly announced. In the second stage, Cournot competition evolves. We prove that sales delegation generates equilibria radically different from relative performance delegation. Using classical Cournot as the benchmark, contractual bargaining over sales compensation gives tougher product market competition-and hence higher consumer surplus. The opposite holds true for relative performance delegation. Then, cartel behavior is promoted, reducing consumer surplus. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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