This paper not only recommends means whereby principal-agent problems could be addressed, but also considers various ways in which the external auditor and audit committees contribute as corporate governance tools. The impact of bank regulations on risk taking and the need for a consideration of...

In November 2001, a TV program showed that many large Dutch construction companies participated in price fixing. We analyze how one such company, Heijmans, reacted to the reputation crises after the TV program by introducing a code of conduct. We present the outcomes of a questionnaire survey...

This paper not only recommends means whereby principal-agent problems could be addressed, but also considers various ways in which the external auditor and audit committees contribute as corporate governance tools. The impact of bank regulations on risk taking and the need for a consideration of...

Corporations discover that social responsibility pays off. However, sometimes doing what is ethical will prove costly to a company. The purpose of this article is to clarify this trade-off by developing an economic model that describes the choice between profits and principles. The model is used...

The paper analyzes the choice of organizational structure as solution to the trade-off between controlling behavior based on authority rights and minimizing costs for implementing high efforts. The analysis includes the owner of a firm, a top manager and two division heads. If it is more...

Lecture on the first SFB/TR 15 meeting, Gummersbach, July, 18 - 20, 2004We address the question of how the internal organization of partnerships can be affected by moral hazard behavior of their division(s)/agent(s). We explore cases where two entregreneurs, each employing one agent subject ot...

A unilateral policy intervention by a country (such as the introduction of an emission price) can induce firms to relocate to other countries. We analyze a dynamic game where a regulator offers contracts to avert relocation of a firm in each of two periods. The firm can undertake a...

We analyze the optimal regulation of a MFI that has private information on the intrinsic quality of its loan portfolio (adverse selection) and where the MFI’s choice of effort to improve this quality cannot be observed by the regulator (moral hazard). In designing optimal contracts the...

The standard explanation of wage rigidity in principal agent and in efficiency wage models is related to worker risk-aversion. However, these explanations do not consider at least two important classes of empirical evidence: (1) In worker cooperatives workers appear to behave in a less risk...

The decision to cooperate within R&D joint ventures is often based on `expert advice.' Such advice typically originates in a due diligence process, which assesses the R&D joint venture's profitability, for example, by appraising the achievability of synergies. We show that if the experts who...