L'objectif principal de cet article est de présenter les principales composantes du paradigme constitué par la théorie positive de l'agence. La première partie est centrée sur le passage du niveau individuel à l'organisation conçue comme un noeud de contrats. La deuxième partie porte sur...

Worlwide, evidence is increasing that privatization improves firm performance. But in some institutionally-weak transition economies, ownership change has so far not delivered on its promise. Why? Mass and rapid privatization shcmes turned over mediocre assets to people lacking the incentives,...

We model a new effect of exclusivity on non-contractible investments in buyer/seller relationships. By restricting the buyer to purchase from only one seller, exclusivity increases the buyer’s costs of haggling during renegotiation and hence the seller’s relative bargaining power and...

This article seeks to analyse processes of decision-making where multiple costly observations can be made about individual decision outcomes. It presents a simple model of a decision in which information is collected sequentially. Most economic models of sequential collection of costly...

We analyze a model in which agents exert effort to create innovations within an organization. When payments are infeasible, the decision on the implementation of a proposal is shown to be made by simple monotonic decision rules. Then we look for optimal rules in several contexts. A trade-off...

If a manager stays in office for a long time he will have learned much about his subordinates. Thus competition among them will be weakened as the manager has made up his mind who is suited best for which position. With a new manager the ``rat race'' for favorable tasks is restarted leading...

We examine the question whether a decision should be delegated to a subordinate and whether this is done efficiently. We illustrate that delegation is useful for several reasons. First, it serves to test agents with unknown ability. Then, it may improve their motivation when carrying out...

In small business lending the four-eyes principle leads loan officers to propose inflated credit ratings for their clients. Inflated ratings are, however, anticipated and corrected by the credit officers responsible for approving credit assessments. More experienced loan officers inflate those...

In this paper, we explore the factors that determine the longevity of firms. Five central factors were distilled from the literature: position in the supply chain, the nature of the technology used, structure, culture, and financial policy. We made an extensive case-study of the Dutch storage...

This paper analyzes the theoretical approach to the corporate governance, in relation to the different capitalism model. Before, in the paper, there is a survey of different principal definitions of corporate governance. Than, it investigates the different purposes of the Agency Theory,...