Ownership, Control, and Incentive

Tianxi Wang ()

Economics Discussion Papers from University of Essex, Department of Economics

Abstract: The paper shows that the principal can enhance her control over the agent's human capital by acquiring the physical capital that is critical for him to create value. However, the enhancement in the control necessarily reduces his incentive to make human capital investment ex ante and to exert e¤ort ex post. This trade-off between control and incentive thus decides the boundary of the firm. The paper also presents a rationale for M-form firms: centralized ownership of physical capital to facilitate coordination, and dispersed payoff rights to incentivize divisions.

New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-bec and nep-cta
Date: 2009-11-03
View list of references

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.essex.ac.uk/economics/discussion-papers/papers-text/dp676.pdf

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:esx:essedp:676

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
Discussion Papers Administrator, Department of Economics, University of Essex, Wivenhoe Park, Colchester CO4 3SQ, U.K.
http://www.essex.ac. ... /papers-request.shtm

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Economics Discussion Papers from University of Essex, Department of Economics
Contact information at EDIRC.
Series data maintained by Essex Economics Web Manager ().