Information technology, organizational design, and transfer pricing

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Dikolli, SS; Vaysman, I
• 署名单位: INSEAD Business School; University of Texas System; University of Texas Austin
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF ACCOUNTING & ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0165-4101
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jacceco.2005.06.001
• 发表日期: 2006
• 关键词: multinational-firm; Transfer prices; incentives; EFFICIENCY

摘要

We show how information technology affects transfer pricing. With coarse information technology, negotiated transfer pricing has an informational advantage: managers agree to prices that approximate the firm's cost of internal trade more precisely than cost-based transfer prices. With sufficiently rapid offers, this advantage outweighs opportunity costs of managers' bargaining time, and negotiated transfer pricing generates higher profits than the cost-based method. However, as information technology improves, the informational advantage diminishes; the opportunity costs of managers' bargaining eventually dominate, and cost-based methods generate higher profits. Our results explain why firms generally prefer cost-based methods, and when negotiated methods are preferable. (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.