IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/jeborg/v158y2019icp255-268.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Budget selection when agents compete

Author

Listed:
  • Schmidbauer, Eric

Abstract

A principal selects a budget K of how many projects to fund within an organization and then consults N agents, each of whom has private information about his own project’s value. After receiving cheap talk reports from the agents the principal decides which projects to implement subject to the budget, and agents report on new i.i.d. projects every period until the budget is exhausted. When the budget is small relative to the number of agents, each of whom are biased towards their own projects, competition between agents degrades the quality of information conveyed in equilibrium and lowers the principal’s payoff. A larger budget induces less competition and therefore may be selected in order to extract more information from the agents, even though this leads to some unprofitable projects being adopted. In an extension I find that a policy of never allowing a funded agent to seek funding again increases payoffs compared to when the agent can always re-seek funding.

Suggested Citation

  • Schmidbauer, Eric, 2019. "Budget selection when agents compete," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 158(C), pages 255-268.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:jeborg:v:158:y:2019:i:c:p:255-268
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jebo.2018.11.021
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167268118303251
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.jebo.2018.11.021?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Stein, Jeremy C, 1997. "Internal Capital Markets and the Competition for Corporate Resources," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 52(1), pages 111-133, March.
    2. Roman Inderst & Manuel Klein, 2007. "Innovation, endogenous overinvestment, and incentive pay," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 38(4), pages 881-904, December.
    3. Harris, Milton & Raviv, Artur, 1998. "Capital budgeting and delegation," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 50(3), pages 259-289, December.
    4. Vijay Krishna & John Morgan, 2001. "A Model of Expertise," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 116(2), pages 747-775.
    5. Alessandro Bonatti & Heikki Rantakari, 2016. "The Politics of Compromise," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 106(2), pages 229-259, February.
    6. Schmidbauer, Eric, 2017. "Multi-period competitive cheap talk with highly biased experts," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 102(C), pages 240-254.
    7. Milton Harris & Artur Raviv, 2005. "Allocation of Decision-making Authority," Review of Finance, European Finance Association, vol. 9(3), pages 353-383.
    8. Mark Armstrong & John Vickers, 2010. "A Model of Delegated Project Choice," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 78(1), pages 213-244, January.
    9. Wouter Dessein, 2002. "Authority and Communication in Organizations," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 69(4), pages 811-838.
    10. Hanazono, Makoto & Yang, Huanxing, 2009. "Dynamic entry and exit with uncertain cost positions," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 27(3), pages 474-487, May.
    11. Lubensky, Dmitry & Schmidbauer, Eric, 2018. "Equilibrium informativeness in veto games," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 109(C), pages 104-125.
    12. Marco Battaglini, 2002. "Multiple Referrals and Multidimensional Cheap Talk," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 70(4), pages 1379-1401, July.
    13. Rick Antle & Gary D. Eppen, 1985. "Capital Rationing and Organizational Slack in Capital Budgeting," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 31(2), pages 163-174, February.
    14. , & ,, 2013. "Specialization and partisanship in committee search," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 8(3), September.
    15. 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.
    16. Guido Friebel & Michael Raith, 2010. "Resource Allocation and Organizational Form," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 2(2), pages 1-33, May.
    17. Anthony M. Marino & John G. Matsusaka, 2005. "Decision Processes, Agency Problems, and Information: An Economic Analysis of Capital Budgeting Procedures," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 18(1), pages 301-325.
    18. Brown, Pamela C. & Thornton, James R. & Buede, Dennis M. & Miller, Jeffrey B., 1992. "A revelation scheme for allocating organizational resources," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 18(2), pages 201-214, July.
    19. Elazar Berkovitch, 2004. "Why the NPV Criterion does not Maximize NPV," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 17(1), pages 239-255.
    20. Heikki Rantakari, 2016. "Soliciting Advice: Active versus Passive Principals," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 32(4), pages 719-761.
    21. M. Harris & C. H. Kriebel & A. Raviv, 1982. "Asymmetric Information, Incentives and Intrafirm Resource Allocation," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 28(6), pages 604-620, June.
    22. Li, Zhuozheng & Rantakari, Heikki & Yang, Huanxing, 2016. "Competitive cheap talk," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 96(C), pages 65-89.
    23. Rantakari, Heikki, 2014. "A simple model of project selection with strategic communication and uncertain motives," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 102(C), pages 14-42.
    24. Milton Harris & Artur Raviv, 2005. "Allocation of Decision-making Authority," Review of Finance, Springer, vol. 9(3), pages 353-383, September.
    25. Antonio E. Bernardo, 2004. "Capital Budgeting in Multidivision Firms: Information, Agency, and Incentives," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 17(3), pages 739-767.
    26. Gilligan, Thomas W & Krehbiel, Keith, 1987. "Collective Decisionmaking and Standing Committees: An Informational Rationale for Restrictive Amendment Procedures," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 3(2), pages 287-335, Fall.
    27. Krishna, Vijay, 2001. "Asymmetric Information and Legislative Rules: Some Amendments," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 95(2), pages 435-452, June.
    28. Anthony M. Marino, 2007. "Delegation versus Veto in Organizational Games of Strategic Communication," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 9(6), pages 979-992, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Roper, Andrew H. & Ruckes, Martin E., 2012. "Intertemporal capital budgeting," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 36(9), pages 2543-2551.
    2. Andrey Malenko, 2011. "Optimal Design of Internal Capital Markets," 2011 Meeting Papers 442, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    3. Ricardo Alonso & Niko Matouschek, 2008. "Optimal Delegation," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 75(1), pages 259-293.
    4. Bernardo, Antonio E. & Luo, Jiang & Wang, James J.D., 2006. "A theory of socialistic internal capital markets," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 80(3), pages 485-509, June.
    5. Hoang, Daniel & Gatzer, Sebastian & Ruckes, Martin E., 2018. "The economics of capital allocation in firms: Evidence from internal capital markets," Working Paper Series in Economics 115, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Department of Economics and Management.
    6. Arve, Malin & Honryo, Takakazu, 2022. "Wasteful procedures?," Journal of Economics and Business, Elsevier, vol. 122(C).
    7. Sandro Brusco & Fausto Panunzi, 2020. "Internal financing, managerial compensation and multiple tasks," Annals of Finance, Springer, vol. 16(4), pages 501-527, December.
    8. Kim, Doyoung, 2006. "Capital budgeting for new projects: On the role of auditing in information acquisition," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 41(3), pages 257-270, September.
    9. Ricardo Alonso & Wouter Dessein & Niko Matouschek, 2008. "When Does Coordination Require Centralization?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 98(1), pages 145-179, March.
    10. Murali Agastya & Parimal Kanti Bag & Indranil Chakraborty, 2014. "Communication and authority with a partially informed expert," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 45(1), pages 176-197, March.
    11. Schmidbauer, Eric, 2017. "Multi-period competitive cheap talk with highly biased experts," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 102(C), pages 240-254.
    12. Zhuozheng Li & Huanxing Yang & Lan Zhang, 2019. "Pre-communication in a coordination game with incomplete information," International Journal of Game Theory, Springer;Game Theory Society, vol. 48(1), pages 109-141, March.
    13. Alonso, Ricardo, 2009. "Strategic control and strategic communication," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 58682, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    14. 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.
    15. Takashi Shimizu, 2017. "Cheap talk with an exit option: a model of exit and voice," International Journal of Game Theory, Springer;Game Theory Society, vol. 46(4), pages 1071-1088, November.
    16. Stoughton, Neal M. & Zechner, Josef, 2007. "Optimal capital allocation using RAROC(TM) and EVA(R)," Journal of Financial Intermediation, Elsevier, vol. 16(3), pages 312-342, July.
    17. Li, Zhuozheng & Rantakari, Heikki & Yang, Huanxing, 2016. "Competitive cheap talk," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 96(C), pages 65-89.
    18. Wagner, Alexander F. & Miller, Nolan H. & Zeckhauser, Richard J., 2006. "Screening budgets," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 61(3), pages 351-374, November.
    19. McGee, Andrew & Yang, Huanxing, 2013. "Cheap talk with two senders and complementary information," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 79(C), pages 181-191.
    20. Hongbin Cai, 2009. "Costly participation and heterogeneous preferences in informational committees," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 40(1), pages 173-189, March.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Competitive cheap talk; Multiple agents; Resource allocation; Asymmetric information;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D23 - Microeconomics - - Production and Organizations - - - Organizational Behavior; Transaction Costs; Property Rights
    • D74 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Conflict; Conflict Resolution; Alliances; Revolutions
    • D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design
    • G31 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance - - - Capital Budgeting; Fixed Investment and Inventory Studies

    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:eee:jeborg:v:158:y:2019:i:c:p:255-268. 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: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/jebo .

    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.