IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/rcorpf/v6y2017i1p39-67..html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Subsidiary Legal Entities and Innovation

Author

Listed:
  • Kenneth Ayotte

Abstract

Placing innovative assets in a separate subsidiary creates more autonomy for the unit manager of the innovation than a division, even when the subsidiary is wholly owned and controlled by the parent. The key driver is limited liability: unlike a division, the parent has the option to walk away from the subsidiary’s debt obligations. As a result, the parent invests less in developing internal uses for the innovation. This causes the unit manager to invest more in developing independent uses for the innovation: he must ”sink or swim” on his own effort, and his desired actions are less subject to overrule.

Suggested Citation

  • Kenneth Ayotte, 2017. "Subsidiary Legal Entities and Innovation," The Review of Corporate Finance Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 6(1), pages 39-67.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:rcorpf:v:6:y:2017:i:1:p:39-67.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/rcfs/cfw008
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Aghion, Philippe & Tirole, Jean, 1997. "Formal and Real Authority in Organizations," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 105(1), pages 1-29, February.
    2. Bolton, Patrick & Scharfstein, David S, 1990. "A Theory of Predation Based on Agency Problems in Financial Contracting," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 80(1), pages 93-106, March.
    3. Grossman, Sanford J & Hart, Oliver D, 1986. "The Costs and Benefits of Ownership: A Theory of Vertical and Lateral Integration," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 94(4), pages 691-719, August.
    4. repec:ner:ucllon:http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/17678/ is not listed on IDEAS
    5. Scharfstein, David S. & Gromb, Denis, 2002. "Entrepreneurship in Equilibrium," CEPR Discussion Papers 3652, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    6. Robert H. Gertner & David S. Scharfstein & Jeremy C. Stein, 1994. "Internal versus External Capital Markets," NBER Working Papers 4776, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. Robert H. Gertner & David S. Scharfstein & Jeremy C. Stein, 1994. "Internal versus External Capital Markets," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 109(4), pages 1211-1230.
    8. Chesbrough, Henry, 2003. "The governance and performance of Xerox's technology spin-off companies," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 32(3), pages 403-421, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Lóránth, Gyöngyi & Morrison, Alan & Zeng, Jing, 2020. "Organizational Structure and Investment Strategy," CEPR Discussion Papers 15602, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Committee, Nobel Prize, 2016. "Oliver Hart and Bengt Holmström: Contract Theory," Nobel Prize in Economics documents 2016-1, Nobel Prize Committee.
    2. Stein, Jeremy C., 2003. "Agency, information and corporate investment," Handbook of the Economics of Finance, in: G.M. Constantinides & M. Harris & R. M. Stulz (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Finance, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 2, pages 111-165, Elsevier.
    3. Eduard Marinov, 2016. "The 2016 Nobel Prize in Economics," Economic Thought journal, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences - Economic Research Institute, issue 6, pages 97-149.
    4. Gatzer, Sebastian & Hoang, Daniel & Ruckes, Martin, 2015. "Internal Capital Markets and Diversified Firms: Theory and Practice," EconStor Preprints 169432, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics.
    5. Jeremy C. Stein, 2002. "Information Production and Capital Allocation: Decentralized versus Hierarchical Firms," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 57(5), pages 1891-1921, October.
    6. Holger Mueller, 2016. "Reallocation of Capital and Labor within Firms," Swiss Journal of Economics and Statistics, Springer;Swiss Society of Economics and Statistics, vol. 152(4), pages 289-303, October.
    7. Filiz-Ozbay, Emel, 2012. "Incorporating unawareness into contract theory," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 76(1), pages 181-194.
    8. Hoang, Daniel & Gatzer, Sebastian & Ruckes, Martin E., 2018. "The economics of capital allocation in firms: Evidence from internal capital markets," Working Paper Series in Economics 115, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Department of Economics and Management.
    9. Dietrich, Diemo & Jindra, Björn, 2010. "Corporate governance in the multinational enterprise: A financial contracting perspective," International Business Review, Elsevier, vol. 19(5), pages 446-456, October.
    10. Roman Inderst & Holger M. Mueller & Felix Münnich, 2006. "Financing a Portfolio of Projects," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 20(4), pages 1289-1325.
    11. Arnoud W.A. Boot & Anjolein Schmeits, 1996. "Market Discipline in Conglomerate Banks: Is an Internal Allocation of Cost of Capital Necessary as an Incentive Device?," Center for Financial Institutions Working Papers 96-39, Wharton School Center for Financial Institutions, University of Pennsylvania.
    12. Patrick Bolton & David S. Scharfstein, 1998. "Corporate Finance, the Theory of the Firm, and Organizations," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 12(4), pages 95-114, Fall.
    13. de Bettignies, Jean-Etienne & Ross, Thomas W., 2009. "Public-private partnerships and the privatization of financing: An incomplete contracts approach," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 27(3), pages 358-368, May.
    14. Stein, Jeremy C, 1997. "Internal Capital Markets and the Competition for Corporate Resources," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 52(1), pages 111-133, March.
    15. Jean‐Etienne De Bettignies, 2006. "Product market competition and boundaries of the firm," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 39(3), pages 948-970, August.
    16. Gautier, Axel & Heider, Florian, 2002. "The Benefit and Cost of Winner Picking: Redistribution Vs Incentives," Bonn Econ Discussion Papers 31/2002, University of Bonn, Bonn Graduate School of Economics (BGSE).
    17. Shleifer, Andrei & Vishny, Robert W, 1997. "A Survey of Corporate Governance," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 52(2), pages 737-783, June.
    18. Hussinger, Katrin & Dick, Johannes M.H. & Czarnitzki, Dirk, 2018. "Ownership concentration and innovativeness of corporate ventures," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 47(2), pages 527-541.
    19. Tåg, Joacim, 2010. "The Real Effects of Private Equity Buyouts," Working Paper Series 851, Research Institute of Industrial Economics.
    20. Schindler, Dirk & Schjelderup, Guttorm, 2012. "Debt shifting and ownership structure," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 56(4), pages 635-647.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • K10 - Law and Economics - - Basic Areas of Law - - - General (Constitutional Law)
    • K11 - Law and Economics - - Basic Areas of Law - - - Property Law
    • K12 - Law and Economics - - Basic Areas of Law - - - Contract Law
    • K22 - Law and Economics - - Regulation and Business Law - - - Business and Securities Law
    • G31 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance - - - Capital Budgeting; Fixed Investment and Inventory Studies
    • G32 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance - - - Financing Policy; Financial Risk and Risk Management; Capital and Ownership Structure; Value of Firms; Goodwill
    • G33 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance - - - Bankruptcy; Liquidation

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:rcorpf:v:6:y:2017:i:1:p:39-67.. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://academic.oup.com/rcfs .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.