Who's Minding the Store? Motivating and Monitoring Hired Managers at Small, Closely Held Firms: The Case of Commercial Banks

Abstract

We test whether the gains from hiring an outside manager exceed the principal-agent costs of owner-manager separation at 266 small, closely held U.S. commercial banks. Our results suggest that hiring an outside manager can improve a bank's profit efficiency, but that these gains depend on aligning the hired managers with owners via managerial shareholdings. We find that over-utilizing this control mechanism results in entrenchment, while under-utilization is costly in terms of foregone profits. This study provides a relatively unfettered test of mitigating principal-agent costs, because these small banks cannot rely on market forces or blocks of outside investors to monitor managers.

JEL Classification: G21, G34