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On the value of influence activities for capital budgeting

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  • Laux, Volker

Abstract

This paper shows that a capital budgeting process in which the division manager is required to engage in personally costly influence activities prior to a project approval has beneficial incentive effects: it provides the manager with incentives to acquire costly information about project prospects and helps to elicit the revelation of the acquired information. As a consequence, imposing influence costs on the manager can lead to improved capital allocations. The optimal level of influence costs, chosen by the firm, trades off ex ante incentives for information acquisition against efficient use of the acquired information ex post.

Suggested Citation

  • Laux, Volker, 2008. "On the value of influence activities for capital budgeting," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 65(3-4), pages 625-635, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:jeborg:v:65:y:2008:i:3-4:p:625-635
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    2. Kim, Doyoung, 2013. "Delegation of information verification," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 31(5), pages 488-500.
    3. Anthony Dukes & Yi Zhu, 2019. "Why Customer Service Frustrates Consumers: Using a Tiered Organizational Structure to Exploit Hassle Costs," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 38(3), pages 500-515, May.
    4. Bialowolski, Piotr & Weziak-Bialowolska, Dorota, 2014. "External factors affecting investment decisions of companies," Economics - The Open-Access, Open-Assessment E-Journal (2007-2020), Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel), vol. 8, pages 1-21.
    5. Brice Corgnet & Ludivine Martin & Peguy Ndodjang & Angela Sutan, 2015. "On the Merit of Equal Pay: When Influence Activities Interact with Incentive Setting," Working Papers 15-09, Chapman University, Economic Science Institute.
    6. Duncan Simester & Juanjuan Zhang, 2010. "Why Are Bad Products So Hard to Kill?," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 56(7), pages 1161-1179, July.
    7. Michael Powell, 2015. "An Influence-Cost Model of Organizational Practices and Firm Boundaries," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 31(suppl_1), pages 104-142.

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