Subsidiary Financing: Risk Shifting as a Commitment Device
研究企业如何通过设立子公司解决进入新市场时的动态承诺问题，发现子公司通过引入风险转移激励来抵消投资不足，尤其适用于开发成本高、管理成本适中且回报与现有业务不相关的项目。
Abstract We study how firms can design their organizational structures to overcome dynamic commitment problems when entering new markets. A manager exerts costly effort to first develop and subsequently manage an investment opportunity. Ex post, the firm underinvests in projects that generate high management rents. However, the prospect of those rents helps offset the manager’s initial project development cost, making ex ante commitment to invest optimal. Levered subsidiaries mitigate this time-consistency problem by introducing risk-shifting incentives that counteract underinvestment. Subsidiaries are most valuable for projects that are costly to develop, have moderate management costs, and yield returns uncorrelated with existing business.