On Evaluation Costs in Strategic Factor Markets: The Implications for Competition and Organizational Design
通过正式模型研究评估成本如何影响战略要素市场的资源竞争，发现资源稀缺不一定有利于卖方，竞争强度过高会导致协调失败；并比较了激励与监督两种组织设计在资源评估中的效果。
This paper uses a formal model to study how evaluation costs affect competition for resources in strategic factor markets. It finds that relative scarcity may not always benefit resource sellers. Rather, when competition among resource investors passes a certain threshold intensity, miscoordination among investors increases to the point that sellers' expected profits decline. This paper extends the model to consider how investors organize to overcome managerial agency in resource evaluation. Two organizational designs are considered: (a) incentivization, wherein a lower-level manager is motivated by an incentive contract to evaluate resources for an investor, and (b) supervision, wherein evaluation is either handled directly or closely monitored by headquarters. The model suggests that competition among investors will be associated with a greater use of supervision and that investors using supervision will tend to make lower offers. This paper also finds that supervision will be more common when valuable resources are rare. This paper was accepted by Bruno Cassiman, business strategy.