这篇文章好像不是你说那三种。
"Specialization, Agency Cost and Firm Size" by Sungbin Cho
This paper extends the principal-agent model to determine the size of the firm as measured by the number of agent hired. Hiring more agents results in benefits and costs to the principal. The benefits are gains from specialization: higher productivity can be achieved if, as the number of agents increases, their task assignments become more specialized. However, increases in task specialization make monitoring more difficult and costly. In this paper I study peer monitoring among agents. Balancing productivity gains with monitoring costs determines the optimal size of the firm. This paper shows that agency costs due to moral hazard are one factor that sets limits on firm size in a model where it would otherwise be unbounded.
文中有两段讲到这个问题:
The main interest of this paper lies in the trade-off between gains from specialization and monitoring costs. Therefore, this paper sets aside the issue of asset ownership. This paper also sets aside the issues of how firms form and who becomes a principal. It is assumed that a firm exists and the set of tasks that the firm performs is given. But, ignoring asset ownership does not mean that the ownership structure is not important in determining the size of the firm. In some environments, asset ownership is crucial for providing incentives in the presence of incomplete contracts and may be a driving force in determining the size of the firm, as Grossman and Hart (1986) and Hart and Moore (1990) (GHM) note.
The reason for not considering asset ownership is that this paper focuses on the entrepreneurial role of the principal. That is, the primary role of the principal is organizing production. This view goes back to Clark (1909) who notes that “the entrepreneur function in itself includes no working and no owning of capital: it consists entirely in the establishing and maintaining of efficient relations between the agents of production.” Kaldor (1934) echoes Clark and suggests that the fixed factor limiting the size of the firm is coordination. In my view, the rents the principal receives come from the ownership of intellectual capital for organizing production, not from physical capital.6 In this sense, the principal is an entrepreneur who can be an employee.