Managing the Manager: An Application of the Principal Agent Model to the Hudson's Bay Company

Ann Carlos and Stephen Nicholas

Oxford Economic Papers, 1993, vol. 45, issue 2, 243-56

Abstract: Controlling the ability of agents to operate in their own self-interest motivates much of the recent industrial organization literature. However, that literature is generally intractable to empirical testing. Yet we need to know whether firms can successfully attenuate managerial opportunism. The Hudson's Bay Company provides the context, and its records provide the data, for the authors' analysis. They model its agency problem and using that model the authors simulate and calibrate the company's experience. Their numerical estimates show that agency was a potential problem for chartered companies but the Hudson's Bay Company had control of its managers. Copyright 1993 by Royal Economic Society.

Date: 1993
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0030-7653%2819930 ... 0.CO%3B2-9&origin=bc full text (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to JSTOR subscribers. See http://www.jstor.org for details.

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: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:oup:oxecpp:v:45:y:1993:i:2:p:243-56

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://academic.oup.com/journals

Access Statistics for this article

Oxford Economic Papers is currently edited by James Forder and Francis J. Teal

More articles in Oxford Economic Papers from Oxford University Press Oxford University Press, Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP, UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().