Strategic delegation under price competition and network effects

Fershtman and Judd (1987) and Sklivas (1987) have shown that strategic delegation under price competition makes firm owners choose incentive contracts that induce managers to be soft in order to reduce competitive intensity. We show in a worked-out example that under sufficiently strong network effects this result is reversed, i.e. the mode of strategic delegation in general depends on more variables apart from whether managers' strategies are complements or substitutes. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.