Fiscal Year Ends and Nonlinear Incentive Contracts: The Effect on Business Seasonality
发现销售人员和高管的薪酬合同通常是非线性的，这促使他们在财政年度末调整价格和努力，导致企业销售额在年末偏高、年初偏低，且这种模式随行业和商业周期变化。
Salesperson and executive compensation contracts typically specify a nonlinear relationship between firm revenues and pay. These agents therefore have incentive to manipulate prices, influence the timing of customer purchases, and vary effort over their firms' fiscal years. This paper empirically establishes results consistent with agents' focusing on performance over the fiscal year. Most notably, in addition to varying with the calendar business cycle, manufacturing firms' sales are higher at the end of the fiscal year, and lower at the beginning, than they are in the middle. Further evidence is found in fiscal-year price movements and patterns in the industry variation of fiscal-year effects.