At the heart of decentralization lies the notion that tasks are delegated by owners to managers who possess superior local information. The extent of this information asymmetry is often an endogenous construct, as it is influenced by the owner’s choice of internal accounting systems and the...

The paper Asymmetric Information, Incentives and Intrafirm Resource Allocation, by Harris, Kriebel and Raviv (H.K.R.), was published in the June 1982 issue of Management Science. In this article, written as part of this journal's 50-year anniversary celebration, we highlight the significance of...