Multidivisional firms frequently rely on external market prices in order to value internal transactions across profit centers. This paper examines market-based transfer pricing when an upstream division has monopoly power in selling a proprietary component both to a downstream division within...

When consumers' willingness-to-pay increases by a uniform amount, the change in the resulting monopoly price is generally indeterminate. Our analysis identifies sufficient conditions on the underlying demand curve which predict both the sign and the magnitude of the resulting price change.

This paper examines inventory management from an incentive perspective. We show that when a manager has private information about future attainable revenues, the residual income performance measure based on historical cost can achieve optimal (second-best) incentives with regard to managerial...

We study the optimal composition of corporate boards. Directors can be either monitoring or advisory types. Monitoring constrains the empire-building tendency of chief executive officers (CEOs). If shareholders control the board nomination process, a non-monotonic relation ensues between agency...

This monograph focuses on the use of incomplete contracting models to study transfer pricing. Intrafirm pricing mechanisms affect division managers' incentives to trade intermediate products and to undertake relationship-specific investments so as to increase the gains from trade. Letting...

Multidivisional firms frequently rely on external market prices in order to value internal transactions across profit centers. This paper examines market-based transfer pricing when an upstream division has monopoly power in selling a proprietary component both to a downstream division within...

Vertical integration is often proposed as a way to resolve hold-up problems. This ignores the empirical fact that division managers tend to maximize divisional (not firmwide) profit when investing. I develop a model with asymmetric information at the bargaining stage and investment returns...

Return on Investment (ROI) is widely regarded as a key measure of firm profitability. The accounting literature has long recognized that ROI will generally not reflect economic profitability, as determined by the internal rate of return (IRR) of a firm's investment projects. In particular, it...

This paper develops a multiperiod principal-agent model in which a manager must be given incentives to undertake investments and to exert personally costly effort. Investments are "soft" (e.g., intangible assets) and therefore entail measurement errors for the accounting system as it seeks to...