IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/aea/aecrev/v77y1987i1p168-85.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Contract Duration and Relationship-Specific Investments: Empirical Evidence from Coal Markets

Author

Listed:
  • Joskow, Paul L

Abstract

This paper examines empirically the importance of relationship investments in determining the duration of coal contracts negotiated between coal suppliers and electric utilities, using data for 277 coal contracts. For each contract, measures of the duration of contractual commitments agreed to by the parties at the contract execution stage and measures of the importance of relationship specific investments are developed. The results provide strong support for the view that buyers and sellers make longer commitments to the terms of future trade at the contract execution stage, and rely less on repeated bargaining, when relationship-specific investments are more important. Copyright 1987 by American Economic Association.

Suggested Citation

  • Joskow, Paul L, 1987. "Contract Duration and Relationship-Specific Investments: Empirical Evidence from Coal Markets," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 77(1), pages 168-185, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:aea:aecrev:v:77:y:1987:i:1:p:168-85
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0002-8282%28198703%2977%3A1%3C168%3ACDARIE%3E2.0.CO%3B2-H&origin=repec
    File Function: full text
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to JSTOR subscribers. See http://www.jstor.org for details.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:aea:aecrev:v:77:y:1987:i:1:p:168-85. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Michael P. Albert (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/aeaaaea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.