A Note on Agency Conflicts and the Small Firm Investment Decision*
解释代理冲突如何影响小企业投资决策，并利用调查数据发现：增长型及所有权与控制权集中的企业更担心投资不足，而所有权分散的企业更担心过度投资。
This paper explains how agency conflicts—and potential agency conflicts—can influence the investment decisions of small firms, and provides evidence of these effects using data from a recent survey of small firm investment practices. The survey asks business owners to identify their most important investment concern—overinvestment or underinvestment. We find that underinvestment concerns are more prevalent in growing firms, and those with concentrated ownership and control structures. Overinvestment concerns increase as firms adopt less‐concentrated ownership and control structures. These results suggest that the management challenges facing small firms shift as the degree of separation between ownership and control becomes greater.