Agency Regimes Research Articles

Does It Matter Whom An Agent Serves? Evidence from Recent Changes in Real Estate Agency Law

Recent changes in real estate law hastened the shift from a seller's agency regime, in which real estate agents serve the interests of sellers, to a buyer's agency regime, in which agents serve the interests of buyers. Using data from the Atlanta real estate market, we show that the shift to buyer's agency led to a significant decline in real estate prices in the market for relatively expensive houses, while real estate prices did not significantly change in the market for relatively inexpensive homes. In both markets, the average time needed to sell a house fell after the change in agency regimes. These results are consistent with a conclusion that a shift to buyer's agency improves the efficiency of the search process.

Market Valuation and Equity Ownership Structure: The Case of Agency Conflict Regimes

This paper provides further evidence on the link between the firm's performance and the distribution of the common shares between insiders, blockholders and institutions. We endogenize the functional form of the market valuecommon equity structure relationship by using a switching regression methodology. This allows us to observe four distinct ownership structure types that constitute different agency conflict regimes. We provide evidence that supports the notion that investors recognize the existence of such regimes and assess market values differently depending on the type of agency regime the firm operates in. We find that firms with low insider stakes and low blockholder stakes and firms with high insider stakes and high blockholder stakes have the highest agency costs of free cash flow. We also find that the effect of the ownership variables on market values differs across regimes and that there are differences in the monitoring effectiveness of institutional holders and blockholders.