IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cpr/ceprdp/3418.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Information and Control in Alliances and Ventures

Author

Listed:
  • Dessein, Wouter

Abstract

The allocation of control rights in a venture does not matter if partners have congruent preferences. This Paper develops a theory of control as a signal of congruence, and applies it to the structure of alliances between a privately informed ?entrepreneur? (technology firm) and an ?investor? (large corporation). Investor control increases when the entrepreneur is better informed or when the information that the investor receives during the course of the venture is more noisy. More investor control, however, often results in less investor interference, since the investor puts more trust in the entrepreneur upon receiving more control and, hence, has a tendency to neglect ambiguous information ex post. As a result, the cost of signaling is endogenous and the quality of the post-contracting information constrains the amount of pre-contracting information that can be revealed. Our results are in line with empirical findings on control rights in biotechnology alliances and venture capital contracts.

Suggested Citation

  • Dessein, Wouter, 2002. "Information and Control in Alliances and Ventures," CEPR Discussion Papers 3418, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    • Handle: RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:3418
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://cepr.org/publications/DP3418
    Download Restriction: CEPR Discussion Papers are free to download for our researchers, subscribers and members. If you fall into one of these categories but have trouble downloading our papers, please contact us at subscribers@cepr.org
    ---><---

    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. Hart, Oliver & Moore, John, 1990. "Property Rights and the Nature of the Firm," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 98(6), pages 1119-1158, December.
    2. Kaplan, Steven & Strömberg, Per, 2002. "Characteristics, Contracts and Actions: Evidence from Venture Capitalist Analyses," CEPR Discussion Papers 3243, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    3. Lerner, Josh & Merges, Robert P, 1998. "The Control of Technology Alliances: An Empirical Analysis of the Biotechnology Industry," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 46(2), pages 125-156, June.
    4. Patrick Legros & Andrew F. Newman, 2008. "Competing for Ownership," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 6(6), pages 1279-1308, December.
    5. repec:ner:ucllon:http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/17678/ is not listed on IDEAS
    6. Steven N. Kaplan & Per Strömberg, 2003. "Financial Contracting Theory Meets the Real World: An Empirical Analysis of Venture Capital Contracts," Review of Economic Studies, Oxford University Press, vol. 70(2), pages 281-315.
    7. Myers, Stewart C. & Majluf, Nicholas S., 1984. "Corporate financing and investment decisions when firms have information that investors do not have," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 13(2), pages 187-221, June.
    8. Philippe Aghion & Patrick Bolton, 1992. "An Incomplete Contracts Approach to Financial Contracting," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 59(3), pages 473-494.
    9. Mathias Dewatripont & Jean Tirole, 1994. "A Theory of Debt and Equity: Diversity of Securities and Manager-Shareholder Congruence," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 109(4), pages 1027-1054.
    10. Thomas Hellmann, 1998. "The Allocation of Control Rights in Venture Capital Contracts," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 29(1), pages 57-76, Spring.
    11. Philippe Aghion & Jean Tirole, 1994. "The Management of Innovation," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 109(4), pages 1185-1209.
    12. 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.
    13. 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.
    14. Stewart C. Myers & Nicholas S. Majluf, 1984. "Corporate Financing and Investment Decisions When Firms Have InformationThat Investors Do Not Have," NBER Working Papers 1396, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    15. Kathryn E. Spier, 1992. "Incomplete Contracts and Signalling," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 23(3), pages 432-443, Autumn.
    16. Leland, Hayne E & Pyle, David H, 1977. "Informational Asymmetries, Financial Structure, and Financial Intermediation," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 32(2), pages 371-387, May.
    17. Oliver Hart, 2001. "Financial Contracting," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 39(4), pages 1079-1100, December.
    18. Douglas W. Diamond, 1991. "Debt Maturity Structure and Liquidity Risk," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 106(3), pages 709-737.
    19. Aghion, Philippe & Bolton, Patrick, 1987. "Contracts as a Barrier to Entry," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 77(3), pages 388-401, June.
    20. Berglof, Erik, 1994. "A Control Theory of Venture Capital Finance," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 10(2), pages 247-267, October.
    21. Andrei A. Kirilenko, 2001. "Valuation and Control in Venture Finance," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 56(2), pages 565-587, April.
    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. Bottazzi, Laura & Da Rin, Marco & Hellmann, Thomas, 2009. "What is the role of legal systems in financial intermediation? Theory and evidence," Journal of Financial Intermediation, Elsevier, vol. 18(4), pages 559-598, October.
    2. Hellmann, Thomas, 2006. "IPOs, acquisitions, and the use of convertible securities in venture capital," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 81(3), pages 649-679, September.
    3. Vauhkonen, Jukka, 2003. "Financial contracts and contingent control rights," Bank of Finland Research Discussion Papers 14/2003, Bank of Finland.
    4. repec:dau:papers:123456789/4112 is not listed on IDEAS
    5. Adil El Fakir & Richard Fairchild & Mohamed Tkiouat & Abderrahim Taamouti, 2023. "A bargaining model for PLS entrepreneurial financing: A game theoretic model using agent‐based simulation," International Journal of Finance & Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 28(2), pages 1228-1241, April.

    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. Oliver Hart, 2001. "Financial Contracting," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 39(4), pages 1079-1100, December.
    2. David R. Skeie, 2007. "Vesting and control in venture capital contracts," Staff Reports 297, Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
    3. David B. Audretsch & Erik E. Lehmann, 2013. "Corporate governance in newly listed companies," Chapters, in: Mario Levis & Silvio Vismara (ed.), Handbook of Research on IPOs, chapter 9, pages 179-206, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    4. 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.
    5. Broughman, Brian, 2008. "Independent Directors and Board Control in Venture Finance," Berkeley Olin Program in Law & Economics, Working Paper Series qt9w966114, Berkeley Olin Program in Law & Economics.
    6. Matthias Kiefer & Edward Jones & Andrew Adams, 2016. "Principals, Agents and Incomplete Contracts: Are Surrender of Control and Renegotiation the Solution?," CFI Discussion Papers 1603, Centre for Finance and Investment, Heriot Watt University.
    7. Uwe Walz & Carsten Bienz, 2006. "Evolution of Decision and Control Rights in Venture Capital Contracts: An Empirical Analysis," FMG Discussion Papers dp585, Financial Markets Group.
    8. Patrick Legros & Andrew F. Newman, 2014. "Contracts, Ownership, and Industrial Organization: Past and Future," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 30(suppl_1), pages 82-117.
    9. Ambec, S., 2004. "On the governance of start-ups," Working Papers 200406, Grenoble Applied Economics Laboratory (GAEL).
    10. Lerner, Josh & Shane, Hilary & Tsai, Alexander, 2003. "Do equity financing cycles matter? evidence from biotechnology alliances," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 67(3), pages 411-446, March.
    11. Shleifer, Andrei & Vishny, Robert W, 1997. "A Survey of Corporate Governance," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 52(2), pages 737-783, June.
    12. Broughman Brian, 2013. "Independent Directors and Shared Board Control in Venture Finance," Review of Law & Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 9(1), pages 41-72, June.
    13. Becht, Marco & Bolton, Patrick & Roell, Ailsa, 2003. "Corporate governance and control," 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 1, pages 1-109, Elsevier.
    14. Patrick Legros & Andrew F. Newman, 2008. "Competing for Ownership," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 6(6), pages 1279-1308, December.
    15. Steven N. Kaplan & Per Strömberg, 2003. "Financial Contracting Theory Meets the Real World: An Empirical Analysis of Venture Capital Contracts," Review of Economic Studies, Oxford University Press, vol. 70(2), pages 281-315.
    16. Armin Schwienbacher, 2008. "Innovation and Venture Capital Exits," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 118(533), pages 1888-1916, November.
    17. Lewis A. Kornhauser & W. Bentley MacLeod, 2012. "Contracts between Legal Persons [The Handbook of Organizational Economics]," Introductory Chapters,, Princeton University Press.
    18. Josh Lerner & Ulrike Malmendier, 2010. "Contractibility and the Design of Research Agreements," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 100(1), pages 214-246, March.
    19. Mathias Dewatripont & Patrick Legros & Steven A. Matthews, 2003. "Moral Hazard and Capital Structure Dynamics," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 1(4), pages 890-930, June.
    20. SAU, Lino, 2007. "New Pecking Order Financing for Innovative Firms: an Overview," MPRA Paper 3659, University Library of Munich, Germany.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Control rights; Venture capital; Authority; Asymmetric information; Biotechnology alliances;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design
    • G24 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - Investment Banking; Venture Capital; Brokerage
    • G32 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance - - - Financing Policy; Financial Risk and Risk Management; Capital and Ownership Structure; Value of Firms; Goodwill
    • L20 - Industrial Organization - - Firm Objectives, Organization, and Behavior - - - General

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:cpr:ceprdp:3418. 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cepr.org .

    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.