Managerial risk-taking incentives, product market competition and welfare [An article from: European Economic Review]

This digital document is a journal article from European Economic Review, published by Elsevier in 2004. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Media Library immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Description:
Managers' compensation may increase with the variance of the firm's profits. This paper investigates how this affects their choice of strategic variables, and how that affects managerial compensation. The social welfare aspects of this interaction are analyzed in a duopoly setting with uncertain linear demand and linear marginal cost. Compared to a situation in which the managers' compensation does not depend on the variance of profits, social welfare may be either higher, lower, or remain unaffected, depending on the slope of the marginal cost curve and whether the competing firms produce goods that are demand substitutes or complements.