Providing Managerial Incentives: Cash Flows versus Accrual Accounting
通过委托代理模型，比较基于现金流和基于剩余收益（考虑折旧）的绩效指标在激励经理努力工作和投资盈利项目时的代理成本，发现合适的折旧方法能使剩余收益更好地反映经理创造的价值。
This paper analyzes a principal-agent model in which the agent (manager) can exert effort in every period in order to gain access to some investment opportunity. He or she then decides whether the firm undertakes the opportunity. My analysis focuses on satisfactory incentive schemes which motivate the manager to exert effort and to invest in all profitable projects. As a consequence, the principal's gross benefit is held fixed, and the variable of interest is the resulting agency cost, i.e., the present value of all compensation payments to the manager. The manager's compensation payments are based on a performance measure chosen by the principal. My analysis compares performance measures based only on realized cash flows with the residual income performance measure. I assume that the calculation of residual income is based on depreciation charges which reflect the useful life of assets as well as the intertemporal distribution of cash flows generated by those assets. For suitably chosen depreciation charges, residual income reflects at each point in time the value currently created by the manager.