Hedging and the Shareholder-Manager Relationship
Shareholders and management are locked in a classic principal-agent relationship in which shareholders hire managers to run the firm on their behalf. In a world of incomplete and asymmetric information, it is costly or even impossible to fully observe management's performance on behalf of the shareholders. Even if a manager's performance could be observed, judging the value of that performance is problematic. Successful managers could be merely lucky and unsuccessful managers merely unlucky.