Frédéric Palomino

Risk Taking and Optimal Contracts for Money Managers

We study delegated portfolio management when the agent controls the riskiness of the portfolio. Under general conditions, we show that the optimal contract is simply a bonus contract: the agent is paid a fixed sum if the portfolio return is above a threshold. We derive a criterion to decide whether the optimal contract induces excessive or insufficient risk. If a deviation from efficient risk taking causes a large (small) reduction in the expected return of the portfolio, the optimal contract induces excessive (insufficient) risk. In other words, the cheaper it is to play with risk, the less risk the agent takes. Copyright 2003 by the RAND Corporation.

Performance Gender Gap: Does Competition Matter?

Using data for students undertaking a series of real-world academic examinations with high future payoffs, we examine whether the differences in these evaluations’ competitive nature generate a performance gender gap. In the univariate setting we find that women’s performance is first-order stochastically dominated by that of men when the competition is higher, whereas the reverse holds true in the less competitive or noncompetitive tests. These results are confirmed in the multivariate setting. Our findings, from a real-world setting with important payoffs at stake, are in line with the evidence from experimental research that finds that females tend to perform worse in more competitive contexts.

Internal vs External CEO Choice and the Structure of Compensation Contracts

Any firm choosing a CEO faces a double problem: candidate selection and choice of a compensation scheme. We derive sufficient conditions where the unique optimal compensation scheme is a capped-bonus contract in a pure moral-hazard environment, while equity is used when the firm also faces adverse-selection. Then, we provide a rationale for the simultaneous increases in CEO pay, use of equity in compensation and external hiring of CEOs. Our results are consistent with empirical evidence that shows externally hired CEOs earn more than those internally hired and that externally hired CEOs get a higher fraction of their compensation equity based.

Should Smart Investors Buy Funds with High Returns in the Past

Newspapers and weekly magazines catering to the investing crowd often rank funds according to the returns generated in the past. Aside from satisfying sheer curiosity, these numbers are probably also the basis on which investors pick a fund to invest in. In this article, we fully characterize the equilibrium in a game between a mutual fund manager of unknown ability who controls the riskiness of his portfolio and investors who only observe realized returns. We derive conditions under which (i) investors invest in the fund if the realized return falls within some interval, ie., is neither too low nor too high, (ii) an informed fund manager picks a portfolio of minimal riskiness, (iii) an uninformed mutual fund manager will pick a portfolio with higher risk, ‘gambling’ on a lucky outcome and (iv), when the fee structure is endogenous, both types of manager choose the same fraction-of-fund fee structure. Our results are consistent with empirical evidence about the lack of persistence of top performance, and about the very wide use of fraction-of-fund fee structure among mutual funds.

On CEO Appointment and Compensation

CEO compensation has received a lot of attention in the recent past, above all the widening gap between its level and that of the compensation of other employees. However, this increase in CEO pay was accompanied by changes in the structure of CEO pay (i.e., the increased use of stock options) and changes in CEO appointment (boards of directors choosing CEOs outside the firm rather than inside). In this article, we propose a amended version of the standard principal-agent model that provides a rationale for the simultaneous increases in (i) CEO pay, (ii) use of stock options in compensation schemes and (iii) hiring of CEOs externally. Furthermore, we derive new testable implications regarding compensation packages proposed to internally promoted and externally chosen CEOs.