Agency cost

An agency cost is an economic concept that relates to the cost incurred by an entity (such as organizations) associated with problems such as divergent management-shareholder objectives and information asymmetry. The costs consist of two main sources:

1. The costs inherently associated with using an agent (e.g., the risk that agents will use organizational resource for their own benefit) and
2. The costs of techniques used to mitigate the problems associated with using an agent (e.g., the costs of producing financial statements or the use of stock options to align executive interests to shareholder interests).

Though effects of agency cost are present in any agency relationship, the term is most used in business contexts.

Agency costs in corporate finance

The information asymmetry that exists between shareholders and the Chief Executive Officer is generally considered to be a classic example of a principal-agent problem. The agent (the manager) is working on behalf of the principal (the shareholders), who does not observe the actions of the agent. This information asymmetry causes the agency problems of moral hazard and adverse selection.

Agency costs mainly arise due to divergence of control, separation of ownership and control and the different objectives (rather than shareholder maximization) the managers consider.

According to Michael and Westerfield (Corporate Finance, 7th edition): when a firm has debt, conflicts of interest arise between stockholders and bondholders. Because of this, stockholders are tempted to pursue selfish strategies, imposing agency costs on the firm. These strategies are costly, because they lower the market value of the whole firm.

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There are various actors in the field and various objectives that can incurr costly correctional behaviour. The various actors are mentioned and their objectives are given below.

Management

Management, specifically the CEO, have their own objectives to pursue. The classical ones are empire-building, risk-averse investments and manipulating financial figures to optimize bonuses and stock-price-related options. The latter may be just outright fraudulent, but the first two certainly aren't. They erode stockholder value, but a risk-averse strategy is not by definition fraudulent.

Bondholders

Bondholders typically value a risk-averse strategy since that will increase the chances of getting their investment back. Stockholders on the other hand are willing to take on very risky projects. If the risky projects succeed they will get all of the profits themselves, whereas if the projects fail the risk is shared with the bondholder.

Bondholders know this of course, so they will have costly and large ex-ante contracts in place prohibiting the management from taking on very risky projects should they arise, or they will simply raise the interest rate which in turn increases the cost of capital for the company.

Board of directors

The board of directors in the literature is typically viewed as aligned with either management or the shareholders.

Labour

Labour is sometimes aligned with stockholders and sometimes with management. They too share the same risk averse strategy, since they cannot diversify their labour whereas the stockholders can diversify their stake in the equity. Risk averse projects reduce the risk of bankruptcy and in turn reduce the chances of job-loss. On the other hand, if the CEO is clearly underperforming the company is in threat of a hostile takeover which is sometimes associated with job-loss. They are therefore likely to give the CEO considerable leeway in taking risk averse projects, but if the manager is clearly underperforming, they will likely signal that to the stockholders.

Other stakeholders

Other stakeholders such as government, suppliers and customers all have their specific interests to look after and that might incur additional costs. Agency costs in the government may include the likes of government wasting taxpayers money to suit their own interest, which may conflict with the general tax paying public who may want it used elsewhere on things such as healthcare and education. The literature however mainly focuses on the above categories of agency costs.

Agency costs in agricultural contracts

While complete contract theory is useful for explaining the terms of agricultural contracts, such as the sharing percentages in tenancy contracts (Steven N. S. Cheung, 1969)^[1], agency costs are typically needed to explain their forms. For example, piece rates are preferred for labor tasks where quality is readily observable, e.g. sharpened sugar cane stalks ready for planting. Where effort quality is difficult to observe, e.g. the uniformity of broadcast seeds or fertilizer, wage rates tend to be used. Allen and Lueck (2004)^[2] have found farm organization is strongly influenced by diversity in the form of moral hazard such that crop and household characteristics explain the nature of the farm, even absent risk aversion. Roumasset (1995)^[3] finds that warranted intensification (e.g. due to land quality) jointly determines optimal specialization on the farm, along with the agency costs of alternative agricultural firms. Where warranted specialization is low, peasant farmers relying on household labor predominate. In high value-per-hectare agriculture, however, there is extensive horizontal specialization by task and vertical specialization between owner, supervisory personnel and workers. These agency theories of farm organization and agricultural allow for multiple shirking possibilities, in contrast to the principal-agency version of sharecropping and agricultural contracts (Stiglitz, 1974^[4], 1988^[5], 1988^[6]) which trades-off labor shirking vs. risk-bearing.

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