Negotiated Transfer Pricing, Specific Investment, and Optimal Capacity Choice

This paper investigatesinvestment decisions in a divisionalized firm, in which an upstreamdivision supplies an intermediate product to a downstream division.The upstream division's investment includes two simultaneousdecisions. First, the division determines its capacity level,and second, it invests in a firm specific production technologythat lowers the marginal cost of production. Both the capacityand the specificity decision must be made before the actual demandfor the intermediate product is observable. Since the terms ofinternal trade are negotiated between the divisions, the upstreamdivision faces the well-known holdup problem and thus has incentivesto underinvest. It turns out that a simple contract stipulatinga minimum quantity and a transfer price for excessive quantitiesis sufficient to induce the efficient capacity and specificitydecisions.     

Inter-Departmental Cost Allocation and Investment Incentives

This paper endeavors to demonstrate that fixed cost allocation can align investment incentives in a multi-period and multi-division setting. In a decentralized firm, a divisional manager can make an investment that benefits both his own and the operations of a downstream division. The relative budgeted activity (RBA) cost allocation method assigns fixed cost charges according to the ratio of a divisions budgeted activity in proportion to that of the firm, and thereby resolves the hold-up problem created by the decentralized setting. Internal accounting rules can be designed to give managers strong incentives to internalize the firms objective regarding efficient investment levels, and alleviate the tension between ex ante investment efficiency and ex post production efficiency. This paper examines how much the fixed charges should be in order to achieve the optimal level of investment.     

ALLOCATING CAPITAL AMONG A FIRM'S DIVISIONS: HURDLE RATES VS. BUDGETS

This paper examines the merits of alternative systems for allocating capital within a firm. A budget system, whereby top management limits divisional investment, even without full knowledge of the divisions' investment opportunities, can make economic sense. The budget system can be useful when there are externalities among the investments of different divisions and when division managers' estimates of projects' NPVs are subject to unpredictable errors. The budget system is weak, however, in terms of its use of division managers' expertise. As a result, most firms use budgets as only one part of their capital allocation system.     

Dual transfer pricing with internal and external trade

This paper examines a transfer pricing problem between two divisions of a decentralized firm. The selling division is privately informed about its own costs and produces a good that is sold both externally in an intermediate market and internally within the firm. Unlike most previous work, we focus on dual transfer pricing systems that allow the selling division to be credited for an amount that differs from the amount charged to the buying division. We identify conditions under which efficient decentralized trade and external price setting incentives can be provided with a properly chosen set of dual transfer prices that do not rely on direct communication. Instead, the optimal dual transfer prices will depend only on public information about the market price charged by the upstream division in the external market, which indirectly communicates information about production costs to the downstream division. For a variety of well-known demand functions, the optimal transfer prices will be linear functions of the market price. Our main results hold when the upstream division faces multiple internal buyers or faces a binding capacity constraint.     

Transfer Pricing, Incentive Compensation and Tax Avoidance in a Multi-Division Firm

This article examines the relation between transfer pricing and production incentives using a model of a vertically integrated firm with divisions located in different tax jurisdictions. We show that if divisional profits are taxed at the same marginal rate, the transfer price should be set to minimize the compensation risk faced by the manager of the buying division. For the case where divisional profits are taxed at different marginal rates, we are able to characterize the trade-off between the tax savings from setting transfer prices to reduce profitability in the high tax jurisdication and the loss of effort attributable to the impact of tax avoidance on the incentive compensation system. Further, we show that if it is feasible to compensate the division managers using multiple performance measures, the transfer price should be used to minimize the firm's overall tax liability. Finally, we show that when authority to determine the transfer price must be delegated to one of the division managers, it is optimal to assign responsibility for setting the transfer price to the manager of the division with the most production uncertainty.     

THE VIABLE EVA CENTER (OR, HOW TO SLICE A COMPANY SO IT DOESN'T BLEED)

How a company is sliced, or broken up into divisions of various sorts, has a huge effect on the accountability and hence the behavior of its managers. Senior management faces a tradeoff between delegating authority to subordinates who have the best information for specific decisions, and maintaining authority to avoid parochial behavior that might hurt the organization as a whole. Divisions exist within companies to provide a framework for such delegation. A divisional structure allows decision-making authority to be pushed down along with accountability for results. Thus, how divisions are established is critical to decision-making, motivation, and accountability.
The ultimate test of a well-formed division is a high degree of correspondence between division financial results and financial results for the company as a whole. When an increase in divisional EVA can contribute to a decline in company-wide EVA, this is evidence of a poorly formed division, or what the author calls a "non-viable" EVA center. This article provides a framework for defining a "viable EVA center" as well as three ways of making existing divisions more viable: (1) use of transfer pricing and intrafirm charges; (2) reorganization; and (3) aggregation of divisional results.     

External and Internal Pricing in Multidivisional Firms

Multidivisional firms frequently rely on external market prices in order to value internal transactions across profit centers. This paper examines market‐based transfer pricing when an upstream division has monopoly power in selling a proprietary component both to a downstream division within the same firm and to external customers. When internal transfers are valued at the prevailing market price, the resulting transactions are distorted by double marginalization. The imposition of intracompany discounts will always improve overall firm profits provided the supplying division is capacity constrained. Under certain conditions it is then possible to design discount rules so that the resulting prices and sales quantities are efficient from the corporate perspective. In contrast, the impact of intracompany discounts remains ambiguous when the capacity of the selling division is essentially unlimited. It is then generally impossible to achieve fully efficient outcomes by means of market‐based transfer pricing unless the external market for the component is sufficiently large relative to the internal market.     

A model of cost-based transfer pricing

In most decentralized organizations, goods and services are transferred between divisions. These transfers are frequently recorded in the accounting books of the divisions; the term transfer price refers to the dollar amount of the interdivisional exchange. This study considers two main issues: (i) the costs and the benefits of delegating decisions through a system of transfer pricing and divisional performance evaluation, and (ii) the performance of one common method of pricing intrafirm transactions: cost-based transfer pricing.The study analyzes a firm in which each divisional manager has better information about the divisional environment than what is known by the firm's top management. The first half of the paper demonstrates that the firm can attain the optimal level of profits with a compensation system utilizing (i) reports by divisional managers describing in complete detail each manager's private information, and (ii) divisional performance evaluation with cost-based transfer pricing. Next, a situation is considered in which divisional managers are not able to communicate their private information to the firm's top management because of complexity of divisional environments or managers' specialized expertise. In this bounded-rationality setting, a managerial-compensation system employing cost-based transfer pricing allows the firm to earn strictly higher expected profits than if all decisions are made by the firm's top management relying on divisional managers' reports.Financial support from the Unisys Corporation is gratefully acknowledged.     

SPECIFIC KNOWLEDGE AND DIVISIONAL PERFORMANCE MEASUREMENT

This paper discusses five common divisional performance measurement methods—cost centers, revenue centers, profit centers, investment centers, and expense centers—and provides the beginnings of a theory that attempts to explain when each of these five methods is likely to be the most efficient. The central insight of the theory is that each of these methods offers an alternative way of aligning decision-making authority with valuable "specific knowledge" inside the organization.
The theory suggests that cost and revenue centers work best in cases where headquarters has good information about cost and demand functions, product quality, and optimal output mix. Profit centers—defined as business units whose managers have responsibility for overall profits, but not the authority to make major capital spending decisions—tend to supplant revenue and cost centers when the line managers have a significant informational advantage over headquarters and when there are few interdependencies (or "synergies") between divisions. Investment centers—that is, profit centers in which unit managers are allowed to make major investment decisions—tend to prevail when the activity is capital-intensive and when it is difficult for headquarters to identify the value-maximizing investment strategy.
In evaluating the performance of profit centers, rate-of-return performance measures like RONA (return on net assets) are likely to be effective when unit managers have little influence over the level of new investment. But, in the case of investment centers, Economic Value Added, or EVA, is likely to be the most effective single-period measure of performance because it is best designed to encourage value-maximizing investment decisions.     

Specific Knowledge and Divisional Performance Measurement

This classic by the formulators of agency cost theory discusses five common divisional performance measurement methods—cost centers, revenue centers, profit centers, investment centers, and expense centers—while providing a theory that attempts to explain when each of these methods is likely to be the most efficient. The central insight of the theory is that each method offers a different way of aligning decision-making authority with valuable "specific knowledge" inside the organization.
The theory suggests that cost and revenue centers work best in cases where headquarters has good information about cost and demand functions, product quality, and optimal output mix. Profit centers—defined as business units whose managers have responsibility for overall profits, but not the authority to make major capital spending decisions—tend to supplant revenue and cost centers when line managers have a significant informational advantage over headquarters and when there are few interdependencies (or "synergies") between divisions. Investment centers—profit centers in which unit managers are allowed to make major investment decisions—tend to prevail when the activity is capital-intensive and when it is difficult for headquarters to identify the value-maximizing investment strategy.
In evaluating the performance of profit centers, rate-of-return measures like ROA are likely to be effective when unit managers do not have major influence over the level of new investment. But, in the case of investment centers, Economic Value Added, or EVA, is likely to be the most effective single-period measure because it is designed to encourage only value-increasing investment decisions.     

金融服务、外资政策调整与企业出口——基于中国微观数据的验证

基于金融服务是制造业的重要中间品投入,本文研究我国金融服务业外资政策动态变化对下游企业出口行为的影响。理论上,金融服务业外资准入放松有助于提升金融服务中间品的技术和管理水平,直接效果是有助于提升出口企业使用金融服务的多样化和便捷化,促进企业出口。本文采用国家发改委公布的《外商投资产业指导目录》,首次度量了我国金融服务业外资准入政策的动态变化,并使用投入产出表将其与我国制造业企业数据进行上下游关联,有效检验了金融服务业外资政策调整对下游制造业企业出口的作用。结果表明:金融服务业外资政策调整放开有助于提高下游制造业企业出口倾向和收益,存在出口促进作用;管理效率高、出口非技术密集型及资本密集型产品的企业出口对金融服务业外资政策调整的反应更为灵敏;金融服务业外资政策调整放开通过缓解企业融资约束促进企业出口。本文研究显示我国金融服务业外资政策调整放开是推动我国贸易提升的一个重要支撑点。     

Financial centers and ownership concentration: When is ownership concentration value relevant? Evidence from an emerging market

Does the location of a firm’s headquarter effect ownership concentration? Do stock market participants value ownership concentration differently for firms located at different geographic locations? Using data from India, this paper shows that firms headquartered in Mumbai, the main financial center of a country, have lower ownership concentration than firms headquartered elsewhere. We argue that clustering of firms in the financial center reduce information asymmetries and lower the incentives for concentrated ownership. Our results also show that as the extent of analyst following increase, the difference between ownership concentration of firms headquartered in Mumbai and firms headquartered elsewhere goes up. We argue that higher analyst coverage reduces information asymmetries quicker for firms headquartered in the financial center and results in larger difference between the two groups. In addition, we also show that ownership concentration is value relevant only for firms headquartered in the non-financial centers. We show no relationship between ownership concentration and firm performance and valuation in the financial centers. This paper provides evidence that location of a firm’s headquarter in the financial center can significantly alter its information environment. Reduced information asymmetries lower the incentives for concentrated ownership in the financial centers.     

A theory of socialistic internal capital markets

We develop a model of a two-division firm in which the “strong” division has, on average, higher quality investment opportunities than the “weak” division. We show that, in the presence of agency and information problems, optimal effort incentives are less powerful and thus managerial effort is lower in the strong division. This leads the firm to bias its project selection policy against the strong division. The selection bias is more severe when there is a larger spread in the average quality of investment opportunities between the two divisions.     

Is corporate social responsibility sufficient enough to explain the investment by socially responsible funds?

I propose an explanation for investment decisions by socially responsible investment funds (SRI) on the firms with higher corporate social responsibility (CSR). Different from the previous literature, I use a unique and comprehensive measure that considers both firm CSR ratings and fund CSR perception. I show SRI mutual funds increase their ownership about 15 % for one unit increase in the firm CSR score when those funds are highly sensitive to CSR. This finding is more pronounced for employee relations and society areas of CSR. The results also hold for a broader range of mutual funds. While industry concentration does not have influence on the fund investment, SRI funds particularly choose socially responsible firms operating in construction, transportation, personal services, and financial sector. I show the funds with CSR sensitivity underperform the market in general and fail to improve their portfolio performance after they invest in the firms with high CSR.     

Vertical structure and innovation: A study of the SoC and smartphone industries

This article studies how vertical integration and upstream R&D subsidy affect innovation and welfare in vertically separated industries. I formulate a dynamic structural model of a dominant upstream firm and oligopolistic downstream firms that invest in complementary innovations. I estimate the model using data on the System-on-Chip (SoC) and smartphone industries. The results suggest that a vertical merger can increase innovation and welfare, mainly driven by the investment coordination of the merged firms. I also find that subsidizing the upstream innovation increases overall private investment, innovation, and welfare.     

Capital Budgeting in Multidivision Firms: Information, Agency, and Incentives

We examine optimal capital allocation and managerial compensationin a firm with two investment projects (divisions) each runby a risk-neutral manager who can provide (i) (unverifiable)information about project quality and (ii) (unverifiable) accessto value-enhancing, but privately costly resources. The optimalmanagerial compensation contract offers greater performancepay and a lower salary when managers report that their projectis higher quality. The firm generally underinvests in capitaland managers underutilize resources (relative to first-best).We also derive cross-sectional predictions about the sensitivityof investment in one division to the quality of investment opportunitiesin the other division, and the relative importance of division-leveland firm-level performance-based pay in managerial compensationcontracts.     

Ownership,incentives, and the hold‐up problem

Vertical integration is often proposed as a way to resolve hold‐up problems. This ignores the empirical fact that division managers tend to maximize divisional (not firmwide) profit when investing. I develop a model with asymmetric information at the bargaining stage and investment returns taking the form of cash and “empire benefits.” Owners of a vertically integrated firm will then provide division managers with low‐powered incentives to induce them to bargain more cooperatively, resulting in higher investments and overall profit as compared with nonintegration. Vertical integration therefore mitigates hold‐up problems even without profit sharing.     

Divisional Informativeness Gap and Value Creation from Asset Sales

Nanda and Narayanan (1999) show that the information asymmetry between the managers and market participants regarding divisional cash flows helps explain the value creation on asset sales. Based on their theoretical framework, the divisional informativeness gap hypothesis predicts that the announcement‐period return increases with the difference in cash‐flow informativeness of retained and divested divisions prior to the divestiture. Our results, using industry‐average earnings response coefficient as a proxy for cash‐flow informativeness of a division, support this prediction. The effect is stronger when a conglomerate retains the division with relatively greater growth opportunities.     

Discussion of “decentralized capacity management and internal pricing”

Dutta and Reichelstein (2010) study the role of transfer pricing and organizational choice in providing incentives for efficient decisions on the acquisition and subsequent reallocation of capacity within decentralized firms. Their analysis suggests that transfer prices based on the historical cost of capacity facilitate the efficient allocation of resources. They also find that symmetric responsibility center structures are generally better suited for providing efficient investment incentives than hybrid organizations. An important condition for the derivation of the two results is the linearity of the shadow prices of capacity. If shadow prices are nonlinear, transfer prices should be below (above) the historical cost of capacity in order to counteract the managers’ incentives to underinvest (overinvest). Because profit center organizations can use transfer prices for mitigating the inefficiency caused by nonlinear shadow prices, they offer a natural advantage over pure investment center organizations in implementing efficient capacity decisions. Overall, these observations suggest that the curvature of profit functions is an important factor in determining the suitable instruments for decentralized capacity management.     

The Cost of Diversity: The Diversification Discount and Inefficient Investment

We model the distortions that internal power struggles can generate in the allocation of resources between divisions of a diversified firm. The model predicts that if divisions are similar in the level of their resources and opportunities, funds will be transferred from divisions with poor opportunities to divisions with good opportunities. When diversity in resources and opportunities increases, however, resources can flow toward the most inefficient division, leading to more inefficient investment and less valuable firms. We test these predictions on a panel of diversified U.S. firms during the period from 1980 to 1993 and find evidence consistent with them.