The use of information plays an important role in the choice of transfer prices (TP). We discuss the information provision of two centralized mechanisms, namely, actual-cost and standard-cost based TP. Actual cost based TP use all available cost information whereas standard cost based TP only...

This paper compares the performance of alternative cost-based transfer pricing methods. We adopt an incomplete contracting framework with asymmetric information at the trading stage. Transfer pricing guides intra-company trade and provides incentives for value-enhancing specific investments. We...