IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/eecrev/v42y1998i1p35-59.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Describability and agency problems

Author

Listed:
  • Anderlini, Luca
  • Felli, Leonardo

Abstract

This paper suggests a reason, other than asymmetric information, why agency contracts are not explicitly contingent on the agent's performance or actions. Two ingredients are essential to this reason. The first is the written form that contracts are required to take to be enforceable. The second is a form of discontinuity in the parties' preferences and in the technology that transforms actions into a (probabilistic) outcome. We show that under these conditions the chosen contract may not be explicitly contigent on the agent's action although, in principle, such actions are contractible and observable to all parties to the contract, court included.
(This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)

Suggested Citation

  • Anderlini, Luca & Felli, Leonardo, 1998. "Describability and agency problems," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 42(1), pages 35-59, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:eecrev:v:42:y:1998:i:1:p:35-59
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0014-2921(96)00062-1
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

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

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Hart, Oliver D & Moore, John, 1988. "Incomplete Contracts and Renegotiation," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 56(4), pages 755-785, July.
    2. Hart, Oliver & Moore, John, 1990. "Property Rights and the Nature of the Firm," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 98(6), pages 1119-1158, December.
    3. Anderlini, L. & Felli, L., 1995. "Endogenous Agency Problems," Papers 200, Cambridge - Risk, Information & Quantity Signals.
    4. Grossman, Sanford J & Hart, Oliver D, 1986. "The Costs and Benefits of Ownership: A Theory of Vertical and Lateral Integration," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 94(4), pages 691-719, August.
    5. Luca Anderlini & Leonardo Felli, 1994. "Incomplete Written Contracts: Undescribable States of Nature," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 109(4), pages 1085-1124.
    6. Grossman, Sanford J & Hart, Oliver D, 1983. "An Analysis of the Principal-Agent Problem," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 51(1), pages 7-45, January.
    7. Matthews, Steven A, 1995. "Renegotiation of Sales Contracts," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 63(3), pages 567-589, May.
    8. repec:cep:stitep:/1993/267 is not listed on IDEAS
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Anderlini, Luca & Felli, Leonardo & Al-Najjar, Nabil I., 2002. "Unforeseen Contingencies," CEPR Discussion Papers 3271, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    2. David A. Miller & Kareen Rozen, 2011. "Optimally Empty Promises and Endogenous Supervision," Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers 1823, Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics, Yale University, revised Jun 2012.
    3. Shurojit Chatterji & Dragan Filipovich, 2004. "Ambiguous Contracting: Natural Language and Judicial Interpretation," Econometric Society 2004 North American Winter Meetings 419, Econometric Society.
    4. Anderlini, Luca & Felli, Leonardo, 2004. "Bounded rationality and incomplete contracts," Research in Economics, Elsevier, vol. 58(1), pages 3-30, March.
    5. Krasa, Stefan & Williams, Steven R., 2007. "Limited observability as a constraint in contract design," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 134(1), pages 379-404, May.
    6. Fares, M’hand, 2005. "Quels fondements à l’incomplétude des contrats?," L'Actualité Economique, Société Canadienne de Science Economique, vol. 81(3), pages 535-555, Septembre.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Eduard Marinov, 2016. "The 2016 Nobel Prize in Economics," Economic Thought journal, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences - Economic Research Institute, issue 6, pages 97-149.
    2. Luca Anderlini & Leonardo Felli, 1999. "Incomplete Contracts and Complexity Costs," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 46(1), pages 23-50, February.
    3. Lewis A. Kornhauser & W. Bentley MacLeod, 2012. "Contracts between Legal Persons [The Handbook of Organizational Economics]," Introductory Chapters,, Princeton University Press.
    4. Eduardo Saavedra, "undated". "Renegotiating Incomplete Contracts: Over and Under Investment of Concessioned Public Infrastructure," ILADES-UAH Working Papers inv106, Universidad Alberto Hurtado/School of Economics and Business.
    5. Lang, Matthias, 2019. "Communicating subjective evaluations," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 179(C), pages 163-199.
    6. Liang Guo, 2021. "Partial Unraveling and Strategic Contract Timing," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 67(12), pages 7719-7736, December.
    7. Anderlini, Luca & Felli, Leonardo, 2004. "Bounded rationality and incomplete contracts," Research in Economics, Elsevier, vol. 58(1), pages 3-30, March.
    8. Oriol Carbonell-Nicolau & Diego Comin, 2005. "Testing out Contractual Incompleteness: Evidence from Soccer," NBER Working Papers 11110, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    9. Surajeet Chakravarty & W. Bentley MacLeod, 2006. "Construction Contracts (or “How to Get the Right Building at the Right Price?”)," CESifo Working Paper Series 1714, CESifo.
    10. Noel, Michael D. & Qiang, Hongjie, 2022. "Open price contracts, locked-in buyers, and opportunism," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 85(C).
    11. Committee, Nobel Prize, 2016. "Oliver Hart and Bengt Holmström: Contract Theory," Nobel Prize in Economics documents 2016-1, Nobel Prize Committee.
    12. M'hand Fares, 2009. "Specific Performance, Separability Condition and the Hold-Up Problem," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 29(3), pages 2055-2062.
    13. Alan Schwartz, 2004. "The Law and Economics of Costly Contracting," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 20(1), pages 2-31, April.
    14. Bester, Helmut & Krähmer, Daniel, 2012. "Exit options in incomplete contracts with asymmetric information," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 147(5), pages 1947-1968.
    15. Claudio Balestri, 2014. "Political Organizations, Interest Groups and Citizens Engagement: An Integrated Model of Democracy," Public Organization Review, Springer, vol. 14(4), pages 533-543, December.
    16. Marco Zanobio, 2012. "Aspetti teorici della Corporate Governance," DISEIS - Quaderni del Dipartimento di Economia internazionale, delle istituzioni e dello sviluppo dis1202, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Dipartimento di Economia internazionale, delle istituzioni e dello sviluppo (DISEIS).
    17. Garvey, Gerald T., 1995. "Why reputation favors joint ventures over vertical and horizontal integration A simple model," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 28(3), pages 387-397, December.
    18. Olivier Meier & Aurélie Sannajust, 0. "The smart contract revolution: a solution for the holdup problem?," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 0, pages 1-16.
    19. Mehrdad Vahabi, 1999. "From Walrasian General Equilibrium to Incomplete Contracts: Making Sense of Institutions," Post-Print halshs-03704424, HAL.
    20. Uwe Walz & Carsten Bienz, 2006. "Evolution of Decision and Control Rights in Venture Capital Contracts: An Empirical Analysis," FMG Discussion Papers dp585, Financial Markets Group.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • C69 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Mathematical Methods; Programming Models; Mathematical and Simulation Modeling - - - Other
    • D89 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Other
    • L14 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance - - - Transactional Relationships; Contracts and Reputation

    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:eee:eecrev:v:42:y:1998:i:1:p:35-59. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/eer .

    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.