Liars Never Prosper? How Management Misrepresentation Reduces Monitoring Costs

When monitoring is not contractible—so investors monitor only when, at that time, they expect to benefit from doing so—efficient contracts sometimes induce managers to makefalsereports to investors. Because of monitoring discretion, management misrepresentation can produce Pareto improvements by reducing monitoring costs. When costs of renegotiation are small, optimal contracts necessarily induce misrepresentation. Discretionary monitoring also generates an equilibrium role for multiple-security capital structures. When an optimal contract has two investors, securityholder conflict arises endogenously as a means of reducing monitoring costs. It is efficient to write the contract so that one investor's decision to monitor hurts the other investor.Journal of Economic LiteratureClassification Number: G32.