Question: Specific Electric Co. asks you to implement
Specific Electric Co. asks you to implement a pay-for-performance incentive contract for its new CEO and four EVPs on the Executive Committee. The five managers can either work really hard with 70 hour weeks at a personal opportunity cost of $200,000 in reduced personal entrepreneurship and increased stress-related health care costs or they can reduce effort, thereby avoiding the personal costs. The CEO and EVPs face three possible random outcomes: the probability of the company experiencing good luck is 30 percent, medium luck is 40 percent, and bad luck is 30 percent. Although the senior management team can distinguish the three “states†of luck as the quarter unfolds, the Compensation Committee of the Board of Directors (and the shareholders) cannot do so. Once the board designs an incentive contract, soon thereafter the good, medium, or bad luck occurs, and thereafter the senior managers decide to expend high or reduced work effort. One of the observable shareholder values listed below then results. 
Assume the company has 10 million shares outstanding offered at a $65 initial share price, implying a $650,000,000 initial shareholder value. Since the EVPs and CEOs effort and the company’s luck are unobservable to the owners and company directors, it is not possible when the company’s share price falls to $50 and the company’s value to $500,000,000 to distinguish whether the company experienced reduced effort and medium luck or high effort and bad luck. If the bonus compensation scheme must be announced in advance, and if you must pick one of the three choices in questions 2, 3 and 4, which one would you pick and why? In other words, under incomplete information, what is the optimal decision by the Board’s Compensation Committee dedicated to act in the shareholders’ interest?
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Shareholder Value GOOD LUCK MEDIUM LUCK BAD LUCK (30%) (40%) (30%) High Effort $1,000,000,000 $800,000,000 $500,000,000 Reduced Effort $ 800,000,000 $500,000,000 $300,000,000
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