The manager equalizes the marginal cost and marginal benefit of stealing. Because the manager owns α of the firm, he has an incentive to invest at least some of the firm’s cash rather than to steal it all. As α rises, the equilibrium amount of stealing falls. As k rises, the amount of stealing in equilibrium rises. If α›1/R, the manager’s stealing is “negative”, meaning the manager puts in some of his own money into the firm, perhaps to keep the firm alive and enjoy “positive” stealing in future (Friedman and Johnson, 1999). For our purposes, we assume that α is low enough that the manager chooses to steal. Alternatively, we could assume that the manager is credit constrained. In this static model, assuming that the manager never steals less than zero dose not substantially alter the analysis.
Differentiating the optimal stealing equation with respect to R give
(∂S*/∂R) = -αk
An increase in the rate of return on the invested resources reduces the amount of stealing because it raises the marginal opportunity cost of the stolen resources.