Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/56917 
Year of Publication: 
2011
Series/Report no.: 
Jena Economic Research Papers No. 2011,042
Publisher: 
Friedrich Schiller University Jena and Max Planck Institute of Economics, Jena
Abstract: 
We study interfirm price competition in the presence of horizontal and vertical intrafirm conflicts in each firm. Intrafirm conflicts are captured by a principal-agent framework with firms employing more than one agent and implementing a tournament incentive scheme. The principals offer premium incentives in the sense of revenue shares to which agents react by proposing a sales price. Introducing such intrafirm conflicts results in higher prices and lower effort levels. Increasing the number of agents lowers the optimal surplus share of the agents as well as the individual effort and the sales prices. Firm profits first increase and then decrease when employing more and more agents suggesting that principals should employ an intermediate number of agents.
Subjects: 
price competition
agency theory
JEL: 
C72
L22
M52
Document Type: 
Working Paper

Files in This Item:
File
Size
333.66 kB





Items in EconStor are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.