Size matters: "Over"investments in a relational contracting setting

Arbeitspapier

The corporate finance literature documents that managers tend to overinvest into physical assets. A number of theoretical contributions have aimed to explain this stylized fact, most of them focussing on a fundamental agency problem between shareholders and managers. The present paper shows that overinvestments are not necessarily the (negative) consequence of agency problems between shareholders and managers, but instead might be a second-best optimal response if the scope of court-enforceable contracts is limited. In such an environment a firm has to rely on relational contracts in order to manage the agency relationship with its workforce. The paper shows that investments into physical productive assets enhance the enforceability of relational contracts and hence investments optimally are "too high".

Object Details

• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Series: SFB/TR 15 Discussion Paper ; No. 506

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Wirtschaft ; Stochastic and Dynamic Games; Evolutionary Games; Repeated Games ; Firm Behavior: Theory ; Economics of Contract: Theory ; Financing Policy; Financial Risk and Risk Management; Capital and Ownership Structure; Value of Firms; Goodwill
• Subject: relational contracts ; corporate finance ; capital investments

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Geistige Schöpfung
• (who): Englmaier, Florian ; Fahn, Matthias
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (who): Sonderforschungsbereich/Transregio 15 - Governance and the Efficiency of Economic Systems (GESY)
• (where): München
• (when): 2015

Further information

• DOI: doi:10.5282/ubm/epub.24878
• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/121371
• URN: urn:nbn:de:bvb:19-epub-24878-5
• Last update: 10.03.2025, 11:45 AM CET