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Information, Authority, and Corporate Hierarchies

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  • Choe, Chongwoo
  • In-Uck, Park

Abstract

In a typical corporate hierarchy, the manager is delegated the authority to make strategic decisions, and to contract with other employees. By studying a model with one principal and two agents where one agent can gather information that is valuable for the principal's project choice and the other agent provides effort to the chosen project, we study when the principal can benefit from such delegation relative to centralization. We show that beneficial delegation is possible when complete contracts cannot be written, and delegation of authority should necessarily be to the information gatherer. The benets of delegation stem from either efficiency gains or reduction in rent to the information gatherer.

Suggested Citation

  • Choe, Chongwoo & In-Uck, Park, 2010. "Information, Authority, and Corporate Hierarchies," MPRA Paper 21865, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    • Handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:21865
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    4. Colin Davis & Ken-Ichi Hashimoto, 2015. "Industry Concentration, Knowledge Diffusion and Economic Growth Without Scale Effects," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 82(328), pages 769-789, October.
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    6. John Foster, 2015. "Energy, Knowledge and Economic Growth," Economic Complexity and Evolution, in: Andreas Pyka & John Foster (ed.), The Evolution of Economic and Innovation Systems, edition 127, pages 9-39, Springer.
    7. Mellon, Vicky & Bramwell, Bill, 2018. "The temporal evolution of tourism institutions," Annals of Tourism Research, Elsevier, vol. 69(C), pages 42-52.
    8. Choe Chongwoo & Park In-Uck, 2011. "Information, Authority, and Corporate Hierarchies," The B.E. Journal of Theoretical Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 11(1), pages 1-39, February.
    9. Banerjee, Rajabrata & Roy, Saikat Sinha, 2014. "Human capital, technological progress and trade: What explains India's long run growth?," Journal of Asian Economics, Elsevier, vol. 30(C), pages 15-31.
    10. David I. Stern and Astrid Kander, 2012. "The Role of Energy in the Industrial Revolution and Modern Economic Growth," The Energy Journal, International Association for Energy Economics, vol. 0(Number 3).
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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Corporate hierarchies; information gathering; delegation; centralization.;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D21 - Microeconomics - - Production and Organizations - - - Firm Behavior: Theory
    • D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design
    • L22 - Industrial Organization - - Firm Objectives, Organization, and Behavior - - - Firm Organization and Market Structure
    • C72 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Noncooperative Games

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