The three coeditors knew John Butterworth for many years and had worked closely with him on a number of research projects. We respected him as a valuable colleague and friend. We were greatly saddened by his untimely death. This book is an attempt to remember him. We dedicate the volume to John with thanks for the contributions he made to our research, to the Faculty of Commerce and Business Administration at the University of British Columbia, and to the accounting profession. This volume contains twelve invited papers on the general topic of the economic theory of information and contracts. We asked leading scholars who had known John to contribute papers. The response was very gratifying. The authors provided us with new strong research papers that should make a lasting contribution to the accounting and information economics research literature, and make us all proud to have put this volume together. The research papers in the volume are in three sections: information evaluation in multi person conte)l: ts; contracting in agencies under moral hazard; and contracting in agencies with private information. We begin part I with Jerry Feltham's review of John Butterworth's pioneering contributions to the accounting and information economics literature. This is followed by an introduction to the papers in the volume and the papers themselves.

The three coeditors knew John Butterworth for many years and had worked closely with him on a number of research projects. We respected him as a valuable colleague and friend. We were greatly saddened by his untimely death. This book is an attempt to remember him. We dedicate the volume to John with thanks for the contributions he made to our research, to the Faculty of Commerce and Business Administration at the University of British Columbia, and to the accounting profession. This volume contains twelve invited papers on the general topic of the economic theory of information and contracts. We asked leading scholars who had known John to contribute papers. The response was very gratifying. The authors provided us with new strong research papers that should make a lasting contribution to the accounting and information economics research literature, and make us all proud to have put this volume together. The research papers in the volume are in three sections: information evaluation in multi person conte)l: ts; contracting in agencies under moral hazard; and contracting in agencies with private information. We begin part I with Jerry Feltham's review of John Butterworth's pioneering contributions to the accounting and information economics literature. This is followed by an introduction to the papers in the volume and the papers themselves.

Timeliness, Accuracy, and Relevance in Dynamic Incentive Contracts examines managerial performance measures from the perspective of timeliness, accuracy, and relevance in multi-period incentive problems. The authors use a simple linear framework where managerial actions do not affect risk and compare and contrast consumption risk for a manager's preferences with single and multiple consumption dates, respectively. Both full commitment to and renegotiation of long-term contracts are considered. Under full commitment, timely and accurate information is usually relevant and desirable; the only differences arise from the modeling of managerial preferences, through the manager's consumption risk. In particular, the timeliness of performance reports can be irrelevant; then, delaying reports is desirable if it can increase their accuracy. Under renegotiation of long-term contracts, the timeliness of information release relative to renegotiation is essential. Any information released prior to renegotiation is incorporated into an ex post efficient (renegotiated) contract and is particularly useful in insuring the manager against future consumption risk. Delayed reporting destroys this insurance value and can make late reports irrelevant, independent of the modeling of managerial preferences. But timely reports can create ex ante inefficient action incentives for managers, and then accuracy can be costly as well.

Equity Valuation reviews and critically examines the standard approach to equity valuation using a constant risk-adjusted cost of capital and develops a new valuation approach discounting risk-adjusted fundamentals using nominal zero-coupon interest rates. Equity Valuation is organized as follows. Chapter 2 (Risk-adjusted Discount Rates) reviews standard valuation models based on risk-adjusted discount rates. Chapter 3 (Multi-period Asset Pricing Theory and Accounting Relations) examines key results from multi-period asset pricing theory in discrete-time, and shows how equity valuation models can equivalently be based on free cash flows or accrual accounting numbers. Based on these results, the authors derive an accounting-based multi-period equity valuation model presented in Chapter 4 (An Accounting-based Multi-period Equity Valuation Model) with equilibrium risk-adjustments determined by prices of aggregate consumption claims. Chapter 5 (Equity Valuation with HARA Utility) includes a general equilibrium analysis of a setting in which the investors have HARA utility, and aggregate consumption and residual operating income are jointly normally distributed. A set of appendices follows including Appendix B that extends the setting to preferences with external habit formation (which recently has gained popularity in asset pricing theory), and Appendix C, which discusses the relationship between risk-adjusted expected cash flows and certainty equivalents.