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The Engineering Economist, 53: 173–196, 2008 Copyright © 2008 Institute of Industrial Engineers ISSN: 0013-791X print / 1547-2701 online DOI: 10.1080/00137910802262887 OPERATIONAL DECISIONS, CAPITAL STRUCTURE, AND MANAGERIAL COMPENSATION: A NEWS VENDOR PERSPECTIVE Xiaodong Xu1 and John R. Birge2 1Deutsche Asset Management, New York, New York, USA 2The University of Chicago Graduate School of Business, Chicago, Illinois, USA While firm growth critically depends on financing ability and access to ex- ternal capital, the operations management and engineering economics lit- erature seldom considers the effects of financial constraints on the firms’ operational decisions. Another critical assumption in traditional opera- tions models is that corporate managers always act in the firm owners’ best interests. Managers are, however, agents of the owners of the com- pany, whose interests are often not aligned with those of equity holders or debt holders; hence, managers may make major decisions that are suboptimal from the firm owners’ point of view. This article builds on a news vendor model to make optimal production decisions in the pres- ence of financial constraints and managerial incentives. We explore the relationship between operating conditions and financial leverage and ob- serve that financial leverage can increase as margins reach either low or high extremes. We also provide some empirical support for this observa- tion. We further extend our model to consider the effects of agency costs on the firm’s production decision and debt choice by including performance- based bonuses in the manager’s compensation. Our analyses show how managerial incentives ma