IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/manchs/v79y2011i1p29-44.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Using Cost Observation To Regulate A Manager Who Has A Preference For Empire‐Building

Author

Listed:
  • ANA PINTO BORGES
  • JOÃO CORREIA‐DA‐SILVA

Abstract

We study regulation of a manager who has a preference for empire-building (high output), in the presence of moral hazard (unobservable effort) and adverse selection (unobservable productivity). We find that the optimal contract is linear in cost, being composed by a fixed payment plus a partial cost reimbursement. The preference for higher output reduces the manager's tendency to announce that his or her productivity is low, allowing a more powered incentive scheme (a lower fraction of the cost is reimbursed), which alleviates the problem of moral hazard.

Suggested Citation

  • Ana Pinto Borges & João Correia‐Da‐Silva, 2011. "Using Cost Observation To Regulate A Manager Who Has A Preference For Empire‐Building," Manchester School, University of Manchester, vol. 79(1), pages 29-44, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:manchs:v:79:y:2011:i:1:p:29-44
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1111/j.1467-9957.2010.02224.x
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Fershtman, Chaim & Judd, Kenneth L, 1987. "Equilibrium Incentives in Oligopoly," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 77(5), pages 927-940, December.
    2. Grossman, Sanford J. & Hart, Oliver D., 1988. "One share-one vote and the market for corporate control," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 20(1-2), pages 175-202, January.
    3. Kanniainen, Vesa, 2000. "Empire building by corporate managers:: the corporation as a savings instrument," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 24(1), pages 127-142, January.
    4. Jean-Jacques Laffont & Jean Tirole, 1993. "A Theory of Incentives in Procurement and Regulation," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262121743, December.
    5. Steven D. Sklivas, 1987. "The Strategic Choice of Managerial Incentives," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 18(3), pages 452-458, Autumn.
    6. Michael C. Jensen, 2010. "The Modern Industrial Revolution, Exit, and the Failure of Internal Control Systems," Journal of Applied Corporate Finance, Morgan Stanley, vol. 22(1), pages 43-58, January.
    7. Raj Chetty & Emmanuel Saez, 2005. "Dividend Taxes and Corporate Behavior: Evidence from the 2003 Dividend Tax Cut," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 120(3), pages 791-833.
    8. Jeffrey R. Brown & Nellie Liang & Scott Weisbenner, 2007. "Executive Financial Incentives and Payout Policy: Firm Responses to the 2003 Dividend Tax Cut," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 62(4), pages 1935-1965, August.
    9. Eric Maskin & John Riley, 1984. "Monopoly with Incomplete Information," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 15(2), pages 171-196, Summer.
    10. Laffont, Jean-Jacques & Tirole, Jean, 1986. "Using Cost Observation to Regulate Firms," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 94(3), pages 614-641, June.
    11. Myerson, Roger B, 1979. "Incentive Compatibility and the Bargaining Problem," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 47(1), pages 61-73, January.
    12. Stulz, ReneM., 1990. "Managerial discretion and optimal financing policies," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 26(1), pages 3-27, July.
    13. David P. Baron & David Besanko, 1984. "Regulation, Asymmetric Information, and Auditing," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 15(4), pages 447-470, Winter.
    14. Jensen, Michael C, 1986. "Agency Costs of Free Cash Flow, Corporate Finance, and Takeovers," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 76(2), pages 323-329, May.
    15. Guesnerie, Roger & Laffont, Jean-Jacques, 1984. "A complete solution to a class of principal-agent problems with an application to the control of a self-managed firm," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 25(3), pages 329-369, December.
    16. Li, David D & Li, Shan, 1996. "A Theory of Corporate Scope and Financial Structure," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 51(2), pages 691-709, June.
    17. Canice Prendergast, 2007. "The Motivation and Bias of Bureaucrats," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 97(1), pages 180-196, March.
    18. Zwiebel, Jeffrey, 1996. "Dynamic Capital Structure under Managerial Entrenchment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 86(5), pages 1197-1215, December.
    19. Harris, Milton & Raviv, Artur, 1996. "The Capital Budgeting Process: Incentives and Information," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 51(4), pages 1139-1174, September.
    20. Hart, Oliver & Moore, John, 1995. "Debt and Seniority: An Analysis of the Role of Hard Claims in Constraining Management," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 85(3), pages 567-585, June.
    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. Ana Pinto Borges & Didier Laussel & João Correia-da-Silva, 2013. "Multidimensional Screening with Complementary Activities: Regulating a Monopolist with Unknown Cost and Unknown Preference for Empire Building," Games, MDPI, vol. 4(3), pages 1-29, September.
    2. Ana Borges & João Correia-da-Silva & Didier Laussel, 2014. "Regulating a manager whose empire-building preferences are private information," Journal of Economics, Springer, vol. 111(2), pages 105-130, March.
    3. Sholomitskaya, Elena (Шоломицкая, Елена), 2017. "New Capital Investment vs. M&A: Evidence from Russian Public Corporates [Инвестиции В Новый Капитал И Сделки Поглощений: Случай Российских Публичных Корпораций]," Ekonomicheskaya Politika / Economic Policy, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration, vol. 1, pages 226-249, February.

    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. Ana Borges & João Correia-da-Silva & Didier Laussel, 2014. "Regulating a manager whose empire-building preferences are private information," Journal of Economics, Springer, vol. 111(2), pages 105-130, March.
    2. Stein, Jeremy C., 2003. "Agency, information and corporate investment," Handbook of the Economics of Finance, in: G.M. Constantinides & M. Harris & R. M. Stulz (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Finance, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 2, pages 111-165, Elsevier.
    3. Czarnitzki, Dirk & Kraft, Kornelius, 2009. "Capital control, debt financing and innovative activity," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 71(2), pages 372-383, August.
    4. Moez EL Gaied, 2018. "Investment-Cash Flow Sensitivity and Growth Opportunities," International Journal of Economics and Financial Issues, Econjournals, vol. 8(2), pages 154-160.
    5. Tse-Chun Lin & Qi Liu & Bo Sun, 2015. "Contracting with Feedback," International Finance Discussion Papers 1143, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    6. Harvey, Campbell R. & Lins, Karl V. & Roper, Andrew H., 2004. "The effect of capital structure when expected agency costs are extreme," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 74(1), pages 3-30, October.
    7. Vijayakumaran, Ratnam, 2021. "Impact of managerial ownership on investment and liquidity constraints: Evidence from Chinese listed companies," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 55(C).
    8. Choi, Paul Moon Sub & Chung, Chune Young & Liu, Chang, 2018. "Self-attribution of overconfident CEOs and asymmetric investment-cash flow sensitivity," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 46(C), pages 1-14.
    9. Raffaele Fiocco & Roland Strausz, 2015. "Consumer Standards as a Strategic Device to Mitigate Ratchet Effects in Dynamic Regulation," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 24(3), pages 550-569, September.
    10. Ismail Saglam, 2024. "The Bayesian approach to monopoly regulation after 40 years," Journal of Regulatory Economics, Springer, vol. 65(1), pages 108-136, June.
    11. Tim V. Eaton & Craig Nichols & James Wahlen & Matthew Wieland, 2021. "Managers’ Investment Decisions: Incentives and Economic Consequences Arising from Leases," JRFM, MDPI, vol. 14(4), pages 1-33, April.
    12. Shleifer, Andrei & Vishny, Robert W, 1997. "A Survey of Corporate Governance," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 52(2), pages 737-783, June.
    13. Chune Young Chung & Changhwan Choi & Amirhossein Fard, 2024. "Self‐serving attribution and managerial investment decision," Bulletin of Economic Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 76(3), pages 749-772, July.
    14. Aggarwal, Rajesh K. & Samwick, Andrew A., 2006. "Empire-builders and shirkers: Investment, firm performance, and managerial incentives," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 12(3), pages 489-515, June.
    15. Gatzer, Sebastian & Hoang, Daniel & Ruckes, Martin, 2015. "Internal Capital Markets and Diversified Firms: Theory and Practice," EconStor Preprints 169432, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics.
    16. Armstrong, Mark & Sappington, David E.M., 2007. "Recent Developments in the Theory of Regulation," Handbook of Industrial Organization, in: Mark Armstrong & Robert Porter (ed.), Handbook of Industrial Organization, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 27, pages 1557-1700, Elsevier.
    17. Erwan Morellec & Boris Nikolov & Norman Schürhoff, 2018. "Agency Conflicts around the World," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 31(11), pages 4232-4287.
    18. Hege, Ulrich, 2003. "Workouts, court-supervised reorganization and the choice between private and public debt," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 9(2), pages 233-269, March.
    19. Jellal, Mohamed, 2009. "Unionized Labor Market and Regulation of Monopoly," MPRA Paper 17279, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    20. Laffont, Jean-Jacques, 1994. "The New Economics of Regulation Ten Years After," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 62(3), pages 507-537, May.

    More about this item

    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:bla:manchs:v:79:y:2011:i:1:p:29-44. 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: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/semanuk.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.