In brief, the sequence of events in this model is the following. A firm’s
initial owner or manager makes a private investment in a production technology
that generates stochastic discounted cash flows. The realized value of
these discounted cash flows is not directly observable either by the firm’s accountant
or by anyone else outside the firm. The firm’s accountant observes
a private report from the firm’s owner regarding the owner’s assessment of
these discounted cash flows, together with some hard (in the sense of Ijiri
[1975]) or unmanipulable data about these cash flows. The accountant then
produces an aggregated report that combines the information contained in
the owner’s report and the hard data. Based on this aggregated report,
the firm is sold to another set (or generation) of investors. The motivation
for sale is taken to be exogenous (say, due to liquidity needs or life-cycle
considerations).