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Liars and Inspectors: Optimal Financial Contracts When Monitoring is Non-Observable

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  • Menichini Anna Maria C.

    (Universita’ di Salerno, CSEF and CELPE)

  • Simmons Peter J.

    (University of York)

Abstract

Within a costly state verification setting, we derive the optimal financial contract between an entrepreneur, a (potentially financing) supervisor and a pure investor when there is non-verifiable and non-contractible monitoring and limited liability. We show that diversion of cash flows to the entrepreneur arises as optimal behaviour and that to get the best reporting and monitoring incentives it is crucial to separate the financing from the monitoring role. In particular, higher efficiency can be achieved by ensuring that the entrepreneur and the supervisor do not collect any cash flows in low states. These should be paid to a third party instead, the pure investor, who in exchange provides funding. However, whether the pure investor entirely finances the project (and the supervisor purely acts as a monitor) or only provides partial finance (with the supervisor cofinancing) is immaterial, as the optimal financing of the project can justify a range of alternative financial structures.

Suggested Citation

  • Menichini Anna Maria C. & Simmons Peter J., 2006. "Liars and Inspectors: Optimal Financial Contracts When Monitoring is Non-Observable," The B.E. Journal of Theoretical Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 6(1), pages 1-19, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:bpj:bejtec:v:contributions.6:y:2006:i:1:n:3
    DOI: 10.2202/1534-5971.1216
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    Cited by:

    1. Anna Maria Menichini & Peter Simmons, 2014. "Sorting the good guys from bad: on the optimal audit structure with ex-ante information acquisition," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 57(2), pages 339-376, October.
    2. Peter J. Simmons & Anna Maria C. Menichini, 2022. "Efficient audits by pooling independent projects: Separation vs. conglomeration," Discussion Papers 22/06, Department of Economics, University of York.
    3. Anna Maria C. Menichini & Peter J. Simmons, 2017. "Efficient audits by pooling projects," Discussion Papers 17/19, Department of Economics, University of York.
    4. Rosa Ferrentino & Luca Vota, 2023. "The optimal financing of a conglomerate firm with hidden information and costly state verification," Annals of Finance, Springer, vol. 19(1), pages 23-62, March.

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