Short-termism, Managerial Talent, and Firm Value

Y This paper examines how the firm's choice of investment horizon interacts with rentseeking by privately informed, multitasking managers and the labor market. Two main results surface. First, managers prefer longer-horizon projects that permit them to extract higher rents from firms, so short-termism involves lower agency costs and is value maximizing for some firms. Second, when firms compete for managers, firms practicing short-termism attract better managerial talent when talent is unobservable, but larger firms that invest in long-horizon projects hire more talented managers when talent is revealed.