This book deals with behavioral responses of management of firms that make several decisions with respect to production, marketing, finance, organization of activities within divisions, and interrelations between divisions (including synergies between them and constraints placed on each other in the attainment of overall goals of the firm). The market conditions, that constitute the basis of such decisions, may be stable, random but predictable, or uncertain. It can be expected that objectives attained by the firm, as a result of decisions of management, may be different from the maximum which can be achieved. A generic conceptualization of such managerial discretion and operationally useful methods of measurement have been presented. It is possible to develop machine learning algorithms on this basis to minimize managerial discretion and assist managers in arriving at strategic decisions thereby leaving more resources to deal with uncertain events as they arise. The volume is a great resource not only for researchers, but also decision makers in corporates.

Discretionary Managerial Behavior presents a quantification of the managerial behavior within decentralized organizations. The volume provides practical insights into the internal functioning of the firm, the relationships between the managers at different organizational echelons, and the conditioning effects of the organizational controls and the market environment external to the firm. It forms a basic contribution to the theoretical modeling, methodological and estimation procedures, and empirical insights into the nature and operation of managerial discretion in decentralized organizations. Both theoretical and empirical literature of organizational economics have not come to grips with the decision making process in such organizations. With this in perspective the volume describes four fundamentally new contributions. It presents: an approach to defining proximate objectives of managers at the divisional levels in a decentralized organization and the coordination by managers at higher levels, an approach to developing a modelling framework from a sound theoretical perspective in order to reflect the postulated behavior, an approach to defining an estimation technique to operationalize both (a) and (b) in a specific empirical context, and the richness of empirical insights which remained elusive for over thirty years. As such this study is an important step to make fundamental progress in the area of interface between business policy and microeconomic theory.

The book provides an integrated approach to risk sharing, risk spreading and efficient regulation through principal agent models. It emphasizes the role of information asymmetry and risk sharing in contracts as an alternative to transaction cost considerations. It examines how contracting, as an institutional mechanism to conduct transactions, spreads risks while attempting consolidation. It further highlights the shifting emphasis in contracts from Coasian transaction cost saving to risk sharing and shows how it creates difficulties associated with risk spreading, and emphasizes the need for efficient regulation of contracts at various levels. Each of the chapters is structured using a principal agent model, and all chapters incorporate adverse selection (and exogenous randomness) as a result of information asymmetry, as well as moral hazard (and endogenous randomness) due to the self-interest-seeking behavior on the part of the participants.