IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/bge/wpaper/77.html

A Theory of Information Flows

Author

Listed:
  • Doh-Shin Jeon

Abstract

Obtaining information about changes in market conditions is vital for the survival of the firms operating in a changing environment. In this paper, we offer a theory of information flows in a setting in which the principal faces a project choice and needs to induce the agent, who is responsible for production, to acquire and transmit a signal to improve the matching between the project and the environment. Distortions in information flows arise since the production cost is known only to the agent and therefore he may protect his information rent by withholding the signal. The optimal incentive scheme exhibits countervailing incentives which create a trade-off between the amount of transmitted information and rent extraction. Our theory offers a rationale for the separation of day-to-day operating decisions from long-term strategic decisions stressed by Williamson.

Suggested Citation

  • Doh-Shin Jeon, 2015. "A Theory of Information Flows," Working Papers 77, Barcelona School of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:bge:wpaper:77
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://bw.bse.eu/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/1277-file.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Jean-Jacques Laffont & David Martimort, 1999. "Separation of Regulators Against Collusive Behavior," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 30(2), pages 232-262, Summer.
    2. Farrell, Joseph & Saloner, Garth, 1986. "Installed Base and Compatibility: Innovation, Product Preannouncements, and Predation," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 76(5), pages 940-955, December.
    3. Gromb, Denis & Martimort, David, 2004. "The Organization of Delegated Expertise," IDEI Working Papers 284, Institut d'Économie Industrielle (IDEI), Toulouse.
    4. Steven D. Levitt & Christopher M. Snyder, 1997. "Is No. News Bad News? Information Transmission and the Role of "Early Warning" in the Principal-Agent Model," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 28(4), pages 641-661, Winter.
    5. Severin Borenstein & Joseph Farrell, 2007. "Do investors forecast fat firms? Evidence from the gold-mining industry," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 38(3), pages 626-647, September.
    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. Doh Shin Jeon, "undated". "Relying on the agent in charge of production for project evaluation," Economics Working Papers 623, Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, revised Jan 2006.
    2. Roman Inderst & Manuel Klein, 2007. "Innovation, endogenous overinvestment, and incentive pay," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 38(4), pages 881-904, December.
    3. Guillaume Roger, 2013. "Optimal Contract under Moral Hazard with Soft Information," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 5(4), pages 55-80, November.
    4. Bourjade, Sylvain, 2002. "Diversification of Investor's Expertise in IPOs," MPRA Paper 7259, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised Dec 2007.
    5. Guillaume Roger, 2013. "Moral Hazard with Discrete Soft Information," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 89(287), pages 545-555, December.
    6. Xuemeng Zhao & Weilun Huang, 2024. "Global Geopolitical Changes and New/Renewable Energy Game," Energies, MDPI, vol. 17(16), pages 1-27, August.
    7. Fisher-Vanden, Karen & Mansur, Erin T. & Wang, Qiong (Juliana), 2015. "Electricity shortages and firm productivity: Evidence from China's industrial firms," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 114(C), pages 172-188.
    8. Beomjin Choi & T. S. Raghu & Ajay Vinzé & Kevin J. Dooley, 2019. "Effectiveness of standards consortia: Social network perspectives," Information Systems Frontiers, Springer, vol. 21(2), pages 405-416, April.
    9. McShane, Michael K. & Cox, Larry A. & Butler, Richard J., 2010. "Regulatory competition and forbearance: Evidence from the life insurance industry," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 34(3), pages 522-532, March.
    10. Feltenstein, Andrew & Lagunoff, Roger, 2005. "International versus domestic auditing of bank solvency," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 67(1), pages 73-96, September.
    11. Lagunoff, Roger, 2006. "Credible communication in dynastic government," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 90(1-2), pages 59-86, January.
    12. Slowak, André P., 2009. "Market fields structure & dynamics in industrial automation," FZID Discussion Papers 02-2009, University of Hohenheim, Center for Research on Innovation and Services (FZID).
    13. Dietrich, Antje-Mareike, 2016. "Governmental platform intermediation to promote alternative fuel vehicles," Economics Department Working Paper Series 16, Technische Universität Braunschweig, Economics Department.
    14. Mileva, Elitza & Siegfried, Nikolaus, 2012. "Oil market structure, network effects and the choice of currency for oil invoicing," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 44(C), pages 385-394.
    15. Giovanna Devetag & Enrico Zaninotto, 2001. "The imperfect hiding: Some introductory concepts and preliminary issues on modularity," ROCK Working Papers 010, Department of Computer and Management Sciences, University of Trento, Italy, revised 13 Jun 2008.
    16. Lindbeck, Assar & Weibull, Jörgen, 2020. "Delegation of investment decisions, and optimal remuneration of agents," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 129(C).
    17. Ingela Alger, 2006. "Optimal Debt Contracts when Credit Managers are (Perhaps) Corruptible," Boston College Working Papers in Economics 648, Boston College Department of Economics.
    18. De Chiara, Alessandro & Livio, Luca, 2017. "The threat of corruption and the optimal supervisory task," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 133(C), pages 172-186.
    19. Simon Schopohl, 2017. "Information Transmission in Hierarchies," Université Paris1 Panthéon-Sorbonne (Post-Print and Working Papers) halshs-01491930, HAL.
    20. Howell, Bronwyn, 2006. "Unveiling 'Invisible Hands': Two-Sided Platforms in Health Care Markets," Working Paper Series 3841, Victoria University of Wellington, The New Zealand Institute for the Study of Competition and Regulation.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • D8 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty
    • L2 - Industrial Organization - - Firm Objectives, Organization, and Behavior

    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:bge:wpaper:77. 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: Bruno Guallar (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/bargses.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.