In this section we analyze the effect of outside equity on agency costs by comparing the
behavior of a manager when he owns 100 percent of the residual claims on a firm with his
behavior when he sells off a portion of those claims to outsiders. If a wholly-owned firm is
managed by the owner, he will make operating decisions that maximize his utility. These decisions will involve not only the benefits he derives from pecuniary returns but also the utility generated by
various non-pecuniary aspects of his entrepreneurial activities such as the physical appointments
of the office, the attractiveness of the office staff, the level of employee discipline, the kind and
amount of charitable contributions, personal relations (“friendship,” “respect,” and so on) with
employees, a larger than optimal computer to play with, or purchase of production inputs from
friends. The optimum mix (in the absence of taxes) of the various pecuniary and non-pecuniary
benefits is achieved when the marginal utility derived from an additional dollar of expenditure
(measured net of any productive effects) is equal for each non-pecuniary item and equal to the
marginal utility derived from an additional dollar of after-tax purchasing power (wealth).