The paper analyzes how the choice of organizational structure leads to the best compromise between controlling behavior based on authority rights and minimizing costs for implementing high efforts. Concentrated delegation and hierarchical delegation turn out to be never an optimal compromise. If...

Many successful franchise chains directly own a positive fraction of stores --- a structure referred to as plural form. We propose that this ownership structure is chosen as a commitment not to expropriate franchisees. The theoretical model is based on an empirical analysis of contract and...

This paper analyses the relative efficiency of internal and external monitors. It confirms the intuition that, if the principal and her employees share aligned interests, internal monitoring is superior to external monitoring; vice versa if interests diverge. This result is not robust for two...

The fact that according to the celebrated Coase Theorem rational parties always try to exploit all gains from trade is usually taken as an argument against the necessity of government intervention through Pigouvian taxation in order to correct externalities. However, we show that the hold-up...

We consider a two-stage principal-agent model with limited liability in which a CEO is employed as agent to gather information about suitable merger targets and to manage the merged corporation in case of an acquisition. Our results show that the CEO systematically recommends targets with low...

In a multi-agent setting, individuals often compare own performance with that of their peers. These comparisons in?uence agents? incentives and lead to a noncooperative game, even if the agents have to complete independent tasks. I show that depending on the interplay of the peer effects,...

We analyze innovation race in a moral hazard setting. We develop a model in which two competing entrepreneurs work independently on the same project. The entrepreneurs do not possess any wealth of their own and their research is financed by a venture capitalist. The project, if successful,...

In order to deliver an innovation principals employ competing agents in some circumstances, while employing research team in other circumstances. This paper compares various structures of R&D to provide a rational behind this observation. It is assumed, that the principal can employ either one...