David de Meza and Ben Lockwood
This paper examines the property rights theory of the firm when a manager's relationship-specific investment can be partially appropriated by the owner of an asset when cooperation breaks down. For example ownership typically confers the right to continue with a project even should the production team dissolve. The investments of non-owners may then be devalued, but are seldom wholly loss to the owner. With such spillovers, the outside-option principle can be incorporated into the Grossman-Hart-Moore framework without implying that ownership demotivates. Enriched predictions on the determinants of integration emerge.
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