On the Economics of Transfer Pricing

TLDR

Decentralized firms employ divisional structures, and internal transfer prices affect division activity, investment returns, and overall firm profit. The paper argues that transfer prices should equal market price only when the transferred commodity is competitively produced; otherwise they should be set at marginal cost or a price between marginal cost and market price. When markets are imperfect or absent, the appropriate transfer price is marginal cost or a price between marginal cost and market price under simplifying assumptions.

Abstract

TN ORDER to achieve the benefits of decentralization in decision-making, many corporations have developed divisional organizations in which some or all of the separate divisions are virtually autonomous centers. This paper is concerned with the problem of pricing the goods and services that are exchanged between such divisions within a firm and with how these prices should be set in order to induce each division to act so as to maximize the profit of the firm as a whole. The problem is an important one, because the prices which are set on internal transfers affect the level of activity within divisions, the rate of return on investment by which each division is judged, and the total profit -that is achieved by.the firm as a whole. Two recent papers which have drawn attention to the crucial importance of transfer-price policies have also discussed alternative approaches to the problem.' The paper by Cook recommends the use of market-based prices, at least as an ideal, while Dean favors negotiated competitive prices. Such brief description does not, of course, do justice to either of the articles, both of which were more concerned with drawing attention to the importance of decentralization and transfer pricing than with rigorous determination of optimal transfer-price rules. The argument made in the present paper is that market price is the correct transfer price only where the commodity being transferred is produced in a competitive market, that is, competitive in the theoretical sense that no single producer considers himself large enough to influence price by his own output decision. If the market is imperfectly competitive, or where no market for the transferred commodity exists, the correct procedure is to transfer at marginal cost (given certain simplifying conditions) or at some price between marginal cost and market price in the most general case.2