IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ebl/ecbull/eb-16-00084.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Competition and Agency Cost

Author

Listed:
  • Can Erutku

    (Glendon College, York University)

Abstract

We look at the effect of competition on the level of cost reducing effort made by an agent in an industry where competition is in quantity with homogeneous products. We find that the principal prefers to keep all the profit rather than sharing it with the agent, who ends up exerting no effort regardless of the number of firms in the industry (provided it is greater than two). This suggests that profit sharing contracts might not be the appropriate mechanism to provide incentives in an industry characterized by principal-agent relationships and where firms compete in quantity.

Suggested Citation

  • Can Erutku, 2016. "Competition and Agency Cost," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 36(2), pages 634-639.
    • Handle: RePEc:ebl:ecbull:eb-16-00084
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.accessecon.com/Pubs/EB/2016/Volume36/EB-16-V36-I2-P63.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Jen Baggs & Jean‐Etienne De Bettignies, 2007. "Product Market Competition And Agency Costs," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 55(2), pages 289-323, June.
    2. Stefan Beiner & Markus M. Schmid & Gabrielle Wanzenried, 2011. "Product Market Competition, Managerial Incentives and Firm Valuation," European Financial Management, European Financial Management Association, vol. 17(2), pages 331-366, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. El Diri, Malek & Lambrinoudakis, Costas & Alhadab, Mohammad, 2020. "Corporate governance and earnings management in concentrated markets," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 108(C), pages 291-306.
    2. Ennasri, Ahmed & Willinger, Marc, 2014. "Incentives and managerial effort under competitive pressure: An experiment," Research in Economics, Elsevier, vol. 68(4), pages 324-337.
    3. Ahmed Ennasri, 2010. "Incitations Managériales et Concurrence : Synthèse de la Littérature," Studies and Syntheses 10-03, LAMETA, Universtiy of Montpellier, revised Oct 2010.
    4. Tinaikar, Surjit & Xu, Bo, 2023. "Does competition exacerbate investment inefficiencies? Evidence from Japanese firms," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 87(C), pages 35-53.
    5. Manuel Ammann & David Oesch & Markus M. Schmid, 2013. "Product Market Competition, Corporate Governance, and Firm Value: Evidence from the EU Area," European Financial Management, European Financial Management Association, vol. 19(3), pages 452-469, June.
    6. Jean-Etienne de Bettignies & Anne Duchêne, 2015. "Product Market Competition and the Financing of New Ventures," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 61(8), pages 1849-1867, August.
    7. Ujjayini Roy & Indrani Chakraborty, 2023. "Market concentration, agency cost and firm performance: a case study on Indian corporate firms," Economic Change and Restructuring, Springer, vol. 56(4), pages 2645-2693, August.
    8. Babar, Md. & Habib, Ahsan, 2021. "Product market competition in accounting, finance, and corporate governance: A review of the literature," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 73(C).
    9. Lin, Ling & Xiao, Min & Yao, Rongrong & Zhang, Xiaoying, 2024. "Product market liberalization and corporate cash holdings: Evidence from China," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 86(C).
    10. Ester Manna, 2013. "Intinsically Motivated Agents: Blessing or Curse for Firms ?," Working Papers ECARES ECARES 2013-37, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles.
    11. Jean-Etienne de Bettignies & Thomas W. Ross, 2010. "The Economics of Public–Private Partnerships: Some Theoretical Contributions," Chapters, in: Graeme A. Hodge & Carsten Greve & Anthony E. Boardman (ed.), International Handbook on Public–Private Partnerships, chapter 7, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    12. Jovanovic, Dragan, 2013. "Mergers, managerial incentives, and efficiencies," DICE Discussion Papers 88, Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf Institute for Competition Economics (DICE).
    13. Ledezma, Ivan, 2013. "Defensive strategies in quality ladders," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 37(1), pages 176-194.
    14. Yu, Huaibing, 2024. "Why isn't composite equity issuance favored by the stock market? A risk-based explanation for the anomaly," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 94(C).
    15. Wunhong Su & Chun Guo & Xiaobao Song, 2022. "Media coverage, Environment Protection Law and environmental research and development: evidence from the Chinese-listed firms," Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development, Springer, vol. 24(5), pages 6953-6983, May.
    16. Ester Manna, 2017. "Customer‐oriented employees: Blessing or curse for firms?," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 26(4), pages 842-875, December.
    17. Indranil Dutta & Mario Pezzino & Yan Song, 2022. "Should developing countries ban dual practice by physicians? Analysis under mixed hospital competition," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 31(11), pages 2289-2310, November.
    18. Richard Dion & Robert Fay, 2008. "Understanding Productivity: A Review of Recent Technical Research," Discussion Papers 08-3, Bank of Canada.
    19. Kong, Dongmin & Kong, Gaowen & Liu, Shasha & Zhu, Ling, 2022. "Does competition cause government decentralization? The case of state-owned enterprises," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 50(4), pages 1103-1122.
    20. Jaehong Lee, 2021. "CEO Overconfidence and Voluntary Disclosure of Greenhouse Gas Emissions: With a Focus on the Role of Corporate Governance," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(11), pages 1-19, May.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Principal-Agent; Profit Sharing; Quantity Competition; Effort.;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • L2 - Industrial Organization - - Firm Objectives, Organization, and Behavior
    • D2 - Microeconomics - - Production and Organizations

    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:ebl:ecbull:eb-16-00084. 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: John P. Conley (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    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.