IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberte/0098.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Do Short-Term Managerial Objectives Lead to Under- or Over-Investment in Long-Term Projects

Author

Listed:
  • Lucian Arye Bebchuk
  • Lars A. Stole

Abstract

This paper studies managerial decisions about investment in long-run projects in the presence of imperfect information (the market knows less about such investments than the firm's managers) and short-term managerial objectives (the managers are concerned about the short-term stock price as well as the long-term stock price). Prior work has suggested that imperfect information and short-term managerial objectives induce managers to underinvest in long-run projects. We show that either underinvestment or overinvestment is possible, and we identify the connection between the type of informational imperfection present and the direction of the distortion. When investors cannot observe the level of investment in long-run projects, suboptimal investment will be induced. When investors can observe investment but not its productivity, however, an excessive level of investment will be induced.

Suggested Citation

  • Lucian Arye Bebchuk & Lars A. Stole, 1994. "Do Short-Term Managerial Objectives Lead to Under- or Over-Investment in Long-Term Projects," NBER Technical Working Papers 0098, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberte:0098
    Note: ME
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/t0098.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Stein, Jeremy C, 1988. "Takeover Threats and Managerial Myopia," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 96(1), pages 61-80, February.
    2. 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.
    3. 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.
    4. Jeremy C. Stein, 1989. "Efficient Capital Markets, Inefficient Firms: A Model of Myopic Corporate Behavior," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 104(4), pages 655-669.
    5. Scharfstein, David S & Stein, Jeremy C, 1990. "Herd Behavior and Investment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 80(3), pages 465-479, June.
    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. Mohammed Subhi Al Essawi & Petre Brezeanu, 2011. "The Diversity of Corporate Governance Models. Overview at the Country Level," Annals of the University of Petrosani, Economics, University of Petrosani, Romania, vol. 11(2), pages 5-14.
    2. Grenadier, Steven R. & Wang, Neng, 2005. "Investment timing, agency, and information," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 75(3), pages 493-533, March.
    3. Bebchuk, Lucian A. & Cohen, Alma, 2005. "The costs of entrenched boards," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 78(2), pages 409-433, November.
    4. Grant, Simon & King, Stephen & Polak, Ben, 1996. "Information Externalities, Share-Price Based Incentives and Managerial Behaviour," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 10(1), pages 1-21, March.
    5. Lucian Bebchuk & Oliver Hart, 2001. "Takeover bids vs. Proxy Fights in Contests for Corporate Control," NBER Working Papers 8633, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    6. Toudas, Kanellos & Karathanassis, George, 2007. "Corporate Governance and Firm Performance: Results from Greek Firms," MPRA Paper 6414, University Library of Munich, Germany.

    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. Alex Edmans & William Mann, 2019. "Financing Through Asset Sales," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 65(7), pages 3043-3060, July.
    2. Diana Hechavarría & Charles Matthews & Paul Reynolds, 2016. "Does start-up financing influence start-up speed? Evidence from the panel study of entrepreneurial dynamics," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 46(1), pages 137-167, January.
    3. Praveen Kumar & Nisan Langberg & K. Sivaramakrishnan, 2012. "Voluntary Disclosures, Corporate Control, and Investment," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 50(4), pages 1041-1076, September.
    4. Malcolm Baker & Richard S. Ruback & Jeffrey Wurgler, 2004. "Behavioral Corporate Finance: A Survey," NBER Working Papers 10863, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. An, Suwei, 2023. "Essays on incentive contracts, M&As, and firm risk," Other publications TiSEM dd97d2f5-1c9d-47c5-ba62-f, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    6. Adhikari, Hari P. & Sutton, Ninon K., 2016. "All in the family: The effect of family ownership on acquisition performance," Journal of Economics and Business, Elsevier, vol. 88(C), pages 65-78.
    7. Chen, Tai-Yuan & Zhang, Guochang & Zhou, Yi, 2018. "Enforceability of non-compete covenants, discretionary investments, and financial reporting practices: Evidence from a natural experiment," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 65(1), pages 41-60.
    8. Emanuele Teti & Maurizio Dallocchio & Tancredi Currao, 2022. "Family ownership and M&A payment method," International Journal of Finance & Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 27(2), pages 1989-2005, April.
    9. Guoming Lai & Wenqiang Xiao, 2018. "Inventory Decisions and Signals of Demand Uncertainty to Investors," Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, INFORMS, vol. 20(1), pages 113-129, February.
    10. Edmans, Alex, 2011. "Short-term termination without deterring long-term investment: A theory of debt and buyouts," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 102(1), pages 81-101, October.
    11. Shleifer, Andrei & Vishny, Robert W., 2003. "Stock market driven acquisitions," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 70(3), pages 295-311, December.
    12. Taylan Mavruk & Evert Carlsson, 2015. "How long is a long-term-firm investment in the presence of governance mechanisms?," Eurasian Business Review, Springer;Eurasia Business and Economics Society, vol. 5(1), pages 117-149, June.
    13. Stein, Jeremy C, 1996. "Rational Capital Budgeting in an Irrational World," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 69(4), pages 429-455, October.
    14. Jean Tirole, 1991. "Privatization in Eastern Europe: Incentives and the Economics of Transition," NBER Chapters, in: NBER Macroeconomics Annual 1991, Volume 6, pages 221-268, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    15. Shleifer, Andrei & Vishny, Robert W, 1997. "A Survey of Corporate Governance," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 52(2), pages 737-783, June.
    16. Bange, Mary M. & De Bondt, Werner F. M., 1998. "R&D budgets and corporate earnings targets," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 4(2), pages 153-184, June.
    17. González, Maximiliano & Guzmán, Alexander & Pombo, Carlos & Trujillo, María-Andrea, 2012. "Family firms and financial performance: The cost of growing," Emerging Markets Review, Elsevier, vol. 13(4), pages 626-649.
    18. Hayes, Rachel M. & Schaefer, Scott, 2009. "CEO pay and the Lake Wobegon Effect," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 94(2), pages 280-290, November.
    19. Roychowdhury, Sugata & Shroff, Nemit & Verdi, Rodrigo S., 2019. "The effects of financial reporting and disclosure on corporate investment: A review," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 68(2).
    20. Diana M. Hechavarría & Charles H. Matthews & Paul D. Reynolds, 2016. "Does start-up financing influence start-up speed? Evidence from the panel study of entrepreneurial dynamics," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 46(1), pages 137-167, January.

    More about this item

    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:nbr:nberte:0098. 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://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

    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.