Timing Decisions in Organizations: Communication and Authority in a Dynamic Environment

We consider a problem where an uninformed principal makes a timing decision interacting with an informed but biased agent. Because time is irreversible, the direction of the bias crucially affects the agent's ability to credibly communicate information. When the agent favors late decision makin...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Grenadier, Steven R. (Author), Malenko, Andrey (Contributor), Malenko, Nadya (Author)
Other Authors: Sloan School of Management (Contributor)
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: American Economic Association, 2017-05-16T18:53:08Z.
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Online Access:Get fulltext
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100 1 0 |a Sloan School of Management  |e contributor 
100 1 0 |a Malenko, Andrey  |e contributor 
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700 1 0 |a Malenko, Nadya  |e author 
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856 |z Get fulltext  |u http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/109130 
520 |a We consider a problem where an uninformed principal makes a timing decision interacting with an informed but biased agent. Because time is irreversible, the direction of the bias crucially affects the agent's ability to credibly communicate information. When the agent favors late decision making, full information revelation often occurs. In this case, centralized decision making, where the principal retains authority and communicates with the agent, implements the optimal decision-making rule. When the agent favors early decision making, communication is partial, and the optimal decision-making rule is not implemented. Delegation adds value when the bias is for early decision making, but not for late decision making. 
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773 |t American Economic Review