Agency Revisited Ramon Casadesus-Masanell Daniel F. Spulber Working Paper 10-082 Copyright © 2010 by Ramon Casadesus-Masanell and Daniel F. Spulber Working papers are in draft form. This working paper is distributed for purposes of comment and discussion only. It may not be reproduced without permission of the copyright holder. Copies of working papers are available from the author. Agency Revisited† Ramon Casadesus-Masanell* Daniel F. Spulber** January 2004 The article presents a comprehensive overview of the principal-agent model that emphasizes the role of trust in the agency relationship. The analysis demonstrates that the legal remedy for breach of duty can result in a full-information efficient outcome eliminating both moral hazard and adverse selection problems in agency. The legal remedy motivates agents to behave in a trustworthy fashion and principals to place their trust in agents. In contrast to the standard agency model, a complete description of the principal-agent relationship cannot be based on explicit incentives alone but must recognize implicit and exogenous incentives for trust behavior that derive from the legal, social, and market context. These incentives reduce the need to rely on explicit incentives, allowing the principal and agent to reduce transaction costs by using incomplete contracts. _________________________ †The authors thank Jeffrey Bergstrand, Charlotte Crane, Deborah DeMott, Thomas Gresik, John Oldham McGinnis, Robert H. Sitkoff, Marc Ventresca and David E. Van Zandt for very helpful comments. We also thank participants in seminars at the Northwestern University Law School and at Notre Dame. *Harvard Business School and IESE.
[email protected]. Casadesus-Masanell gratefully acknowledges financial support of Fundación BBVA and the Harvard Business School Division of Research.