Financial innovations and managerial incentive contracting

The top executives' demands for financial instruments that enable them to hedge the risk exposure in their compensation has increased drastically in the last decade. We analyse the implications of a manager's hedging ability for effort incentives. We show that if the manager's hedging opportunity is limited to a known fixed number of trading rounds with risk-neutral third parties, then the equilibrium effort is not affected at all. If the manager has the opportunity to hedge without committing to a last trading round, however, she hedges completely and no effort incentives can be sustained. Therefore, limiting the manager's opportunity to hedge to a fixed known number of trading rounds is crucial for sustaining incentives. JEL classification: G30, G32.