IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/sbs/wpsefe/2003fe02.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Partnership Firms, Reputation and Human Capital

Author

Listed:
  • Alan Morrison
  • William J. Wilhelm, Jr.

Abstract

In human capital intensive industries where it is difficult to contract upon the training effort of skilled agents a socially suboptimal level of training may occur. We show how partnership organisations can overcome this problem by tying human and financial capital. Partnerships are opaque so that the willingness of clients to pay depends upon reputation. Partnerships are illiquid and partners must stay with the firm until clients discover their type and update the firm's reputation. This renders unskilled agents, who will aversely affect reputation, unwilling to accept partnerships. Skilled agents therefore train the next generation so as to ensure that there is an adequate market for their own shares. We comment upon the salient differences between partnerships and joint stock firms.

Suggested Citation

  • Alan Morrison & William J. Wilhelm, Jr., 2003. "Partnership Firms, Reputation and Human Capital," OFRC Working Papers Series 2003fe02, Oxford Financial Research Centre.
    • Handle: RePEc:sbs:wpsefe:2003fe02
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.finance.ox.ac.uk/file_links/finecon_papers/2003fe02.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Luís Almeida Costa & Luís Vasconcelos, 2010. "Share the Fame or Share the Blame? The Reputational Implications of Partnerships," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 19(2), pages 259-301, June.
    2. Bharat N. Anand & Alexander Galetovic & Alvaro Stein, 2004. "Incentives Versus Synergies in Markets for Talent," Documentos de Trabajo 179, Centro de Economía Aplicada, Universidad de Chile.
    3. Peter Bardsley & Nisvan Erkal & Nikos Nikiforakis & Tom Wilkening, 2011. "Recursive Contracts, Firm Longevity, and Rat Races: Theory and Experimental Evidence," Department of Economics - Working Papers Series 1122, The University of Melbourne, revised 2011.
    4. Sevilir, Merih, 2010. "Human capital investment, new firm creation and venture capital," Journal of Financial Intermediation, Elsevier, vol. 19(4), pages 483-508, October.
    5. Viral V. Acharya & Stewart C. Myers & Raghuram G. Rajan, 2011. "The Internal Governance of Firms," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 66(3), pages 689-720, June.
    6. Alessandro Bonatti & Johannes Horner, 2011. "Career Concerns with Coarse Information," Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers 1831, Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics, Yale University, revised Jan 2012.
    7. Demirguc-Kunt, Asli & Love, Inessa & Maksimovic, Vojislav, 2006. "Business environment and the incorporation decision," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 30(11), pages 2967-2993, November.
    8. C Green & J S Heywood, 2007. "Does profit sharing increase training by reducing turnover?," Working Papers 589032, Lancaster University Management School, Economics Department.
    9. Morrison, Alan & Wilhelm Jr, William J, 2005. "The Demise of Investment Banking Partnerships: Theory and Evidence," CEPR Discussion Papers 4904, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    10. Heski Bar-Isaac, 2004. "Something to Prove: Reputation in teams and hiring to introduce uncertainty," Working Papers 04-07, New York University, Leonard N. Stern School of Business, Department of Economics.
    11. Andrew F. Daughety & Jennifer F. Reinganum, 2006. "Hidden Talents: Partnerships with Pareto-Improving Private Information," Vanderbilt University Department of Economics Working Papers 0613, Vanderbilt University Department of Economics.
    12. Agnieszka Rak, 2013. "Brand and Corporate Image of a Sport Organization as a Factor of Building Loyalty," Diversity, Technology, and Innovation for Operational Competitiveness: Proceedings of the 2013 International Conference on Technology Innovation and Industrial Management,, ToKnowPress.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Partnership; on-the-job training; human capital; collective reputation;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J24 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Human Capital; Skills; Occupational Choice; Labor Productivity
    • J41 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Particular Labor Markets - - - Labor Contracts
    • L14 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance - - - Transactional Relationships; Contracts and Reputation
    • L22 - Industrial Organization - - Firm Objectives, Organization, and Behavior - - - Firm Organization and Market Structure

    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:sbs:wpsefe:2003fe02. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Maxine Collett (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/frcoxuk.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.