Information Policy: Shaping the Value of Agency Relationships

We evaluate how changes in information use affect agency relationships. Information asymmetry redistributes value, but imperfect monitoring also encourages agents to take inefficient actions to influence this redistribution, thereby reducing joint agency value. Changing focus, from minimizing principals' costs to maximizing joint agency value, we argue that more monitoring is nof always better, and we explore, through a six-sector framework, how more extensive use of information benefits (or damages) value creation and affects its distribution.