Incentivizing irreversible investment

Existing dynamic investment models that show that a manager can be incentivized to implement the optimal investment policy rely on the assumption that the firm is operating in an ever-expanding product market. This paper presents an analytically tractable, discrete-time, neoclassical model with irreversible investment and the possibility of unfavorable demand events. We show that even when the principal is uninformed about changes in demand for the firm’s output, there exists a performance measurement system that leads to goal congruent investment incentives for the manager. If the principal can observe the unfavorable demand events, then goal congruence can be achieved using very simple accrual accounting rules, such as straight-line depreciation

Accrual accounting, informational sufficiency, and equity valuation

This paper studies accrual accounting and equity valuation in the context of a firm that makes repeated and overlapping investments in productive capacity. The analysis identifies a particular accrual accounting (depreciation) rule that is termed replacement cost accounting because the book value of existing capacity assets is set equal to the value that such assets would have if a competitive market were to exist for used assets. It is shown that replacement cost accounting aggregates past investment decisions of the firm without a loss of value-relevant information. The intrinsic value of the firm can then be expressed as a function of current accounting data and certain parameters of the firm's operating environment. Further, it is shown that replacement cost accounting is essentially the only accounting rule with this informational sufficiency property

Dynamic investment models in accounting research

This monograph presents three variants of the neoclassical investment model and characterizes the firm's optimal investment policy, equity value, and the desirable properties of accrual accounting rules in each setting. Two main questions are considered: (1) What accounting rules result in the most informative financial statements from the perspective of investors seeking to value the firm's equity? and (2) What accounting rules can be efficiently used by shareholders in evaluating the performance of better informed managers? One accounting treatment, referred to as replacement cost accounting, achieves efficiency along both dimensions. The notion of replacement cost studied in this monograph corresponds closely to that of fair value, as defined in IFRS 13, in that it is defined as either (i) the current price of the capital goods in a perfectly competitive market, if such a market is available, or (ii) the hypothetical amount that would have to be incurred today to replace the current and future capacity of the capital goods in question. While the replacement cost rule is, in many settings, unique in providing the firm's shareholders with sufficient information for precise equity valuation, the problem of efficient performance measurement is generally less informationally demanding. For example, under certain plausible conditions, the owners can incentivize a better informed manager to make efficient investment decisions using the straight-line depreciation method

Accounting rules, equity valuation, and growth options

In a model with irreversible capacity investments, we show that financial statements prepared under replacement cost accounting provide investors with sufficient information for equity valuation purposes. Under alternative accounting rules, including historical cost and value in use accounting, investors will generally not be able to value precisely a firm’s growth options and therefore its equity. For these accounting rules, we describe the range of valuations that is consistent with the firm’s financial statements. We further show that replacement cost accounting preserves all value-relevant information if the firm’s investments are reversible. However, the directional relation between the value of the firm’s equity and the replacement cost of its assets is different from that in the setting with irreversible investments

Investment, capital stock, and replacement cost of assets when economic depreciation is non-geometric

This paper extends the Q-theory of investment to capital goods with arbitrary efficiency profiles. When efficiency is non-geometric, the firm’s capital stock and the replacement cost of its assets are fundamentally different aggregates of the firm’s investment history. If capital goods have constant efficiency over a finite useful life, then simple proxies are readily available for both the replacement cost of assets in place and capital stock. Under this assumption, we decompose the total investment rate along two dimensions: into its net and replacement components, and into its cash and non-cash components. We then show that these components exhibit significantly different economic determinants and behavior

Information disclosure, firm growth, and the cost of capital

We study how information disclosure affects the cost of equity capital and investor welfare in a dynamic setting. We show that a firm's cost of capital decreases (increases) in the precision of public disclosure if the firm's growth rate is below (above) a certain threshold. The threshold growth rate is higher when the firm's cash flows are more persistent, or when other firms in the economy are growing at low rates. While current shareholders always prefer maximum public disclosure, future shareholders’ welfare decreases (increases) in the precision of public disclosure if the firm's growth rate is below (above) the threshold