Performance-based bonuses for investment and abandonment decisions

This paper examines whether a performance-based bonus for a manager's investment influences her abandonment decision. First, we derive optimal performance-based bonuses for investment and abandonment decisions. Second, we show that there could be a discrepancy between the managers abandonment timing and that of the shareholders, even though an appropriate performance-based bonus was compensated to mitigate agency conflicts in the investment decision. Third, we also show that as long as the manager is contracted to receive the optimal performance-based bonus for the abandonment decision, only the effort costs that she incurs affect the abandonment timing.