Ownership and Managerial
Competition:
Employee, Customer, or Outside Ownership1
(Preliminary. Comments Welcome)
Patrick Bolton
Princeton University and
CentER, Tilburg University
and
Chenggang Xu
London School of Economics and
HUD, Harvard University
First draft. November 1996: This version. June 1998
Abstract
It is widely accepted that only the protection of private property rights and competi-
tion by rival firms provide adequate incentives to perform for managers and employees.
However, it is not entire!}' clear how ownership interacts with competition. This paper
centres around the question of ownership of firms and managerial competition and how
these affect managers and employees' incentives to invest in human capital.
1We are grateful to Philippe Aghion. Mathias Dewatnpont. Raquel Fernandez. Jerry Green. Oliver
Hart. John Moore. Andrei Shleifer. and Richard Zeckhauser for helpful comments.