IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/iea/carech/0805.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Firms, Shareholders, and Financial Markets

Author

Listed:

Abstract

We study the influence of the financial market on the decisions of firms in the real market. To that end, we present a model in which the shareholders’ portfolio selection of assets and the decisions of the publicly-traded firms are integrated through the market process. Financial access alters the objective function of the firms, and the market interaction of shareholders substantially influences firms’ behavior in the real sector. After characterizing the unique equilibrium, we show that the financial sector integrates the preferences of all shareholders into the decisions for production and ownership structure. The participation from investors in the financial market also limits the firms’ ability to manipulate real prices, i.e., there is a loss of market power in the real sector. Note that, while the loss of market power changes expected profits, it is not detrimental to shareholders since the expected return of equity share depends on the variance (and not the mean) of profits. Indeed, any change in expected profits is absorbed by the financial price. We also show that financial access increases production, thereby altering the distribution of profits. In particular, financial access induces firms to take on more risk. Finally, financial access makes the relationship between risk-aversion and risk-taking ambiguous. For example, it is possible that an increase in risk-aversion leads to more risk-taking, i.e., the variance of real profits increases.

Suggested Citation

  • Leonard J. Mirman & Marc Santugini, 2008. "Firms, Shareholders, and Financial Markets," Cahiers de recherche 08-05, HEC Montréal, Institut d'économie appliquée, revised Mar 2013.
  • Handle: RePEc:iea:carech:0805
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.hec.ca/iea/cahiers/2008/iea0805_msantugini_v8.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Showalter, Dean M, 1995. "Oligopoly and Financial Structure: Comment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 85(3), pages 647-653, June.
    2. Brander, James A. & Lewis, Tracy R., 1986. "Oligopoly and Financial Structure: The Limited Liability Effect," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 76(5), pages 956-970, December.
    3. HOLMSTROM, Bengt, 1979. "Moral hazard and observability," LIDAM Reprints CORE 379, Université catholique de Louvain, Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (CORE).
    4. Baron, David P, 1970. "Price Uncertainty, Utility, and Industry Equilibrium in Pure Competition," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 11(3), pages 463-480, October.
    5. Asplund, Marcus, 2002. "Risk-averse firms in oligopoly," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 20(7), pages 995-1012, September.
    6. James Dow, 2003. "Informed Trading, Investment, and Welfare," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 76(3), pages 439-454, July.
    7. Dotan, Amihud & Ravid, S Abraham, 1985. "On the Interaction of Real and Financial Decisions of the Firm under Uncertainty," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 40(2), pages 501-517, June.
    8. Sandmo, Agnar, 1971. "On the Theory of the Competitive Firm under Price Uncertainty," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 61(1), pages 65-73, March.
    9. Ross, Stephen A, 1973. "The Economic Theory of Agency: The Principal's Problem," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 63(2), pages 134-139, May.
    10. Steven Shavell, 1979. "Risk Sharing and Incentives in the Principal and Agent Relationship," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 10(1), pages 55-73, Spring.
    11. Admati, Anat R & Pfleiderer, Paul & Zechner, Josef, 1994. "Large Shareholder Activism, Risk Sharing, and Financial Market Equilibrium," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 102(6), pages 1097-1130, December.
    12. Hawawini, Gabriel, 1978. "A mean-standard deviation exposition of the theory of the firm under uncertainty," MPRA Paper 10148, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    13. Jean Tirole, 2006. "The Theory of Corporate Finance," Post-Print hal-00173191, HAL.
    14. Leland, Hayne E, 1972. "Theory of the Firm Facing Uncertain Demand," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 62(3), pages 278-291, June.
    15. Peter M. DeMarzo & Branko Uro, 2006. "Ownership Dynamics and Asset Pricing with a Large Shareholder," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 114(4), pages 774-815, August.
    16. Luis Angel Medran & Xavier Vives, 2004. "Regulating Insider Trading When Investment Matters," Review of Finance, European Finance Association, vol. 8(2), pages 199-277.
    17. J. A. Mirrlees, 1999. "The Theory of Moral Hazard and Unobservable Behaviour: Part I," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 66(1), pages 3-21.
    18. Leonard J. Mirman & Neelam Jain, 2000. "Real and financial effects of insider trading with correlated signals," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 16(2), pages 333-353.
    19. Grossman, Sanford J & Hart, Oliver D, 1983. "An Analysis of the Principal-Agent Problem," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 51(1), pages 7-45, January.
    20. Leland, Hayne E, 1992. "Insider Trading: Should It Be Prohibited?," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 100(4), pages 859-887, August.
    21. Kenneth J. Arrow & Robert C. Lind, 1974. "Uncertainty and the Evaluation of Public Investment Decisions," Palgrave Macmillan Books, in: Chennat Gopalakrishnan (ed.), Classic Papers in Natural Resource Economics, chapter 3, pages 54-75, Palgrave Macmillan.
    22. Baron, David P, 1971. "Demand Uncertainty in Imperfect Competition," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 12(2), pages 196-208, June.
    23. Bengt Holmstrom, 1979. "Moral Hazard and Observability," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 10(1), pages 74-91, Spring.
    24. Jain, Neelam & Mirman, Leonard J., 1999. "Insider trading with correlated signals," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 65(1), pages 105-113, October.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Leonard J. Mirman & Egas M. Salgueiro & Marc Santugini, 2013. "Integrating Real and Financial Decisions of the Firm," Cahiers de recherche 1333, CIRPEE.
    2. Eric Fesselmeyer & Leonard J. Mirman & Marc Santugini, 2012. "A Reconsideration of Arrow-Lind: Risk Aversion, Risk Sharing, and Agent Choice," Cahiers de recherche 1201, CIRPEE.
    3. Fesselmeyer, Eric & Mirman, Leonard J. & Santugini, Marc, 2014. "Risk sharing in an asymmetric environment," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 34(C), pages 1-8.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Dionne, Georges & Harrington, Scott, 2017. "Insurance and Insurance Markets," Working Papers 17-2, HEC Montreal, Canada Research Chair in Risk Management.
    2. Meunier, Guy, 2013. "Risk aversion and technology mix in an electricity market," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 40(C), pages 866-874.
    3. Hilmer, Michael, 2013. "Fiscal treatment of managerial compensation - a welfare analysis," VfS Annual Conference 2013 (Duesseldorf): Competition Policy and Regulation in a Global Economic Order 79703, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    4. Guy Meunier, 2014. "Risk Aversion and Technology Portfolios," Review of Industrial Organization, Springer;The Industrial Organization Society, vol. 44(4), pages 347-365, June.
    5. Florian Hoffmann & Roman Inderst & Marcus Opp, 2021. "Only Time Will Tell: A Theory of Deferred Compensation [Motivating Innovation in Newly Public Firms]," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 88(3), pages 1253-1278.
    6. Damien S Eldridge, 2007. "A Shirking Theory of Referrals," Working Papers 2007.05, School of Economics, La Trobe University.
    7. Pierre Chaigneau, 2012. "On the Value of Improved Informativeness," Cahiers de recherche 1205, CIRPEE.
    8. Bengt Holmstrom, 1999. "Managerial Incentive Problems: A Dynamic Perspective," NBER Working Papers 6875, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    9. Fesselmeyer, Eric & Mirman, Leonard J. & Santugini, Marc, 2014. "Risk sharing in an asymmetric environment," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 34(C), pages 1-8.
    10. Xiangkang Yin, 2013. "Two-part tariffs set by a risk-averse monopolist," Journal of Economics, Springer, vol. 109(2), pages 175-192, June.
    11. Kim, Son Ku & Wang, Susheng, 1998. "Linear Contracts and the Double Moral-Hazard," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 82(2), pages 342-378, October.
    12. Inci, A. Can, 2012. "Insider trading activity, tenure length, and managerial compensation," Global Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 23(3), pages 151-166.
    13. Eduard Marinov, 2016. "The 2016 Nobel Prize in Economics," Economic Thought journal, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences - Economic Research Institute, issue 6, pages 97-149.
    14. Son Ku Kim, 1990. "Efficiency of an Information System in an Agency Model," UCLA Economics Working Papers 608, UCLA Department of Economics.
    15. Fleckinger, Pierre & Martimort, David & Roux, Nicolas, 2023. "Should They Compete or Should They Cooperate? The View of Agency Theory," TSE Working Papers 23-1421, Toulouse School of Economics (TSE), revised Jan 2024.
    16. Jean‐Jacques Laffont, 1989. "A Brief Overview of the Economics of Incomplete Markets," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 65(1), pages 54-65, March.
    17. Leonard J. Mirman & Egas M. Salgueiro & Marc Santugini, 2013. "Integrating Real and Financial Decisions of the Firm," Cahiers de recherche 1333, CIRPEE.
    18. Goergen, Marc & Manjon, Miguel C. & Renneboog, Luc, 2008. "Recent developments in German corporate governance," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 28(3), pages 175-193, September.
    19. Inés Macho-Stadler & David Pérez-Castrillo, 2018. "Moral hazard: Base models and two extensions," Chapters, in: Luis C. Corchón & Marco A. Marini (ed.), Handbook of Game Theory and Industrial Organization, Volume I, chapter 16, pages 453-485, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    20. Daher, Wassim & Mirman, Leonard J., 2006. "Cournot duopoly and insider trading with two insiders," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 46(4), pages 530-551, September.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Financial sector; Firm behavior; Market power; Monopoly; Perfect competition; Publicly-traded firm; Shareholder behavior.;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D21 - Microeconomics - - Production and Organizations - - - Firm Behavior: Theory
    • D41 - Microeconomics - - Market Structure, Pricing, and Design - - - Perfect Competition
    • D42 - Microeconomics - - Market Structure, Pricing, and Design - - - Monopoly
    • D80 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - General
    • G32 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance - - - Financing Policy; Financial Risk and Risk Management; Capital and Ownership Structure; Value of Firms; Goodwill
    • L1 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:iea:carech:0805. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Patricia Power (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/iehecca.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.