IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/9763.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Bureaucracy as a Mechanism to Generate Information

Author

Listed:
  • Walter Novaes
  • Luigi Zingales

Abstract

Firms that maintain no formal record of actions and events would hardly be considered well managed. Yet, organizations that require the recording of actions and the filing of reports are often labeled bureaucratic' and inefficient. This paper argues that the thin line between efficient management practices and inefficient bureaucracy is crossed to curb managerial agency costs in a multi-layer hierarchy. The model predicts that bureaucracy increases with the frequency of managerial turnover, and it establishes a link between bureaucracy, incentive schemes, and leverage in a cross-section of firms.

Suggested Citation

  • Walter Novaes & Luigi Zingales, 2003. "Bureaucracy as a Mechanism to Generate Information," NBER Working Papers 9763, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:9763
    Note: CF
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w9763.pdf
    Download Restriction: no

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Milgrom, Paul R, 1988. "Employment Contracts, Influence Activities, and Efficient Organization Design," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 96(1), pages 42-60, February.
    2. Edlin, Aaron S & Stiglitz, Joseph E, 1995. "Discouraging Rivals: Managerial Rent-Seeking and Economic Inefficiencies," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 85(5), pages 1301-1312, December.
    3. Leonardo Felli, 1996. "Preventing Collusion Through Discretion," STICERD - Theoretical Economics Paper Series /1996/303, Suntory and Toyota International Centres for Economics and Related Disciplines, LSE.
    4. Warner, Jerold B. & Watts, Ross L. & Wruck, Karen H., 1988. "Stock prices and top management changes," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 20(1-2), pages 461-492, January.
    5. Holmstrom, Bengt & Milgrom, Paul, 1991. "Multitask Principal-Agent Analyses: Incentive Contracts, Asset Ownership, and Job Design," Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 7(0), pages 24-52, Special I.
    6. Stole, Lars A & Zwiebel, Jeffrey, 1996. "Organizational Design and Technology Choice under Intrafirm Bargaining," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 86(1), pages 195-222, March.
    7. Gilson, Stuart C., 1989. "Management turnover and financial distress," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 25(2), pages 241-262, December.
    8. Denis, David J & Denis, Diane K, 1995. " Performance Changes Following Top Management Dismissals," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 50(4), pages 1029-1057, September.
    9. Milgrom, Paul & Roberts, John, 1990. "The Efficiency of Equity in Organizational Decision Processes," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 80(2), pages 154-159, May.
    10. Harris, Milton & Raviv, Artur, 1990. " Capital Structure and the Informational Role of Debt," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 45(2), pages 321-349, June.
    11. Bengt Holmstrom, 1979. "Moral Hazard and Observability," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 10(1), pages 74-91, Spring.
    12. Matthew C. Clayton & Jay C. Hartzell & Joshua Rosenberg, 2005. "The Impact of CEO Turnover on Equity Volatility," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 78(5), pages 1779-1808, September.
    13. Tirole, Jean, 1986. "Hierarchies and Bureaucracies: On the Role of Collusion in Organizations," Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 2(2), pages 181-214, Fall.
    14. Prendergast, Canice J, 1995. "A Theory of Responsibility in Organizations," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 13(3), pages 387-400, July.
    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. Luigi Zingales, 2000. "In Search of New Foundations," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 55(4), pages 1623-1653, August.
    2. Nicholas Bloom & John Van Reenen, 2007. "Measuring and Explaining Management Practices Across Firms and Countries," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 122(4), pages 1351-1408.
    3. Rajan, Raghuram G & Zingales, Luigi, 2003. "Banks and Markets: the Changing Character of European Finance," CEPR Discussion Papers 3865, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    4. Pietro Alessandrini & Andrea F. Presbitero & Alberto Zazzaro, 2009. "Banks, Distances and Firms' Financing Constraints," Review of Finance, European Finance Association, vol. 13(2), pages 261-307.
    5. Alessandrini, Pietro & Calcagnini, Giorgio & Zazzaro, Alberto, 2008. "Asset restructuring strategies in bank acquisitions: Does distance between dealing partners matter?," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 32(5), pages 699-713, May.
    6. Biondi Yuri, 2011. "The Pure Logic of Accounting: A Critique of the Fair Value Revolution," Accounting, Economics, and Law: A Convivium, De Gruyter, vol. 1(1), pages 1-49, January.
    7. Thomas Hellmann & Enrico Perotti, 2011. "The Circulation of Ideas in Firms and Markets," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 57(10), pages 1813-1826, October.
    8. Makris, Miltiadis, 2009. "Incentives for motivated agents under an administrative constraint," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 71(2), pages 428-440, August.
    9. Pietro Alessandrini & Andrea F. Presbitero & Alberto Zazzaro, 2010. "Bank size or distance: what hampers innovation adoption by SMEs?," Journal of Economic Geography, Oxford University Press, vol. 10(6), pages 845-881, November.
    10. Pietro Alessandrini & Andrea Filippo Presbitero & Alberto Zazzaro, 2008. "Geographical Organization of Banking Systems and Innovation Diffusion," Mo.Fi.R. Working Papers 3, Money and Finance Research group (Mo.Fi.R.) - Univ. Politecnica Marche - Dept. Economic and Social Sciences.
    11. Andrea Bellucci & Alexander V. Borisov & Alberto Zazzaro, 2010. "Do Male and Female Loan Officers Differ in Small Business Lending?;A Review of the Literature," Mo.Fi.R. Working Papers 47, Money and Finance Research group (Mo.Fi.R.) - Univ. Politecnica Marche - Dept. Economic and Social Sciences.
    12. Pietro ALESSANDRINI & Andrea PRESBITERO & Alberto ZAZZARO, 2006. "Banks, Distances and Financing Constraints for Firms," Working Papers 266, Universita' Politecnica delle Marche (I), Dipartimento di Scienze Economiche e Sociali.
    13. Pietro ALESSANDRINI & Giorgio CALCAGNINI & Alberto ZAZZARO, 2006. "Asset Restructuring Strategies in Bank Acquisitions: Evidence from the Italian Banking Industry," Working Papers 264, Universita' Politecnica delle Marche (I), Dipartimento di Scienze Economiche e Sociali.
    14. Andersson, Fredrik, 2004. "A Trickle-Down Theory of Incentives with Applications to Privatization and Outsourcing," Working Papers 2004:13, Lund University, Department of Economics.
    15. Klerman, Daniel & Mahoney, Paul G., 2007. "Legal origin?," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 35(2), pages 278-293, June.
    16. Jose Maria Liberti, 2004. "Initiative, Incentives and Soft Information. How Does Delegation Impact The Role of Bank Relationship Managers?," Finance 0404023, University Library of Munich, Germany.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D2 - Microeconomics - - Production and Organizations
    • G3 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:nberwo:9763. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (). General contact details of provider: http://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

    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 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.

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service hosted by the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis . RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.