IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cpr/ceprdp/3271.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Unforeseen Contingencies

Author

Listed:
  • Anderlini, Luca
  • Felli, Leonardo
  • Al-Najjar, Nabil I.

Abstract

We develop a model of unforeseen contingencies. These are contingencies that are understood by economic agents ? their consequences and probabilities are known ? but are such that every description of such events necessarily leaves out relevant features that have a non-negligible impact on the parties? expected utilities. Using a simple co-insurance problem as a backdrop, we introduce a model where states are described in terms of objective features, and the description of an event specifies a finite number of such features. In this setting, unforeseen contingencies are present in the co-insurance problem when the first-best risk-sharing contract varies with the states of nature in a complex way that makes it highly sensitive to the component features of the states. In this environment, although agents can compute expected pay-offs, they are unable to include in any ex-ante agreement a description of the relevant contingencies that captures (even approximately) the relevant complexity of the risky environment.

Suggested Citation

  • Anderlini, Luca & Felli, Leonardo & Al-Najjar, Nabil I., 2002. "Unforeseen Contingencies," CEPR Discussion Papers 3271, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    • Handle: RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:3271
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://cepr.org/publications/DP3271
    Download Restriction: CEPR Discussion Papers are free to download for our researchers, subscribers and members. If you fall into one of these categories but have trouble downloading our papers, please contact us at subscribers@cepr.org
    ---><---

    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. Anderlini, Luca & Felli, Leonardo, 1998. "Describability and agency problems," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 42(1), pages 35-59, January.
    2. Luca Anderlini & Leonardo Felli, 1999. "Incomplete Contracts and Complexity Costs," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 46(1), pages 23-50, February.
    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. Pierpaolo Battigalli & Giovanni Maggi, 2002. "Rigidity, Discretion, and the Costs of Writing Contracts," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 92(4), pages 798-817, September.
    2. Andrew Postlewaite, 2007. "Courts of Law and Unforeseen Contingencies," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 23(3), pages 662-684, October.
    3. Nabil I. Al-Najjar & Luca Anderlini & Leonardo Felli, 2006. "Undescribable Events," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 73(4), pages 849-868.
    4. Guasch, J. Luis & Laffont, Jean-Jacques & Straub, Stephane, 2003. "Renegotiation of concession contracts in Latin America," Policy Research Working Paper Series 3011, The World Bank.
    5. Pierpaolo Battigalli & Giovanni Maggi, 2008. "Costly contracting in a long‐term relationship," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 39(2), pages 352-377, June.
    6. Guasch, J. Luis & Laffont, Jean-Jacques & Straub, Stéphane, 2008. "Renegotiation of concession contracts in Latin America: Evidence from the water and transport sectors," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 26(2), pages 421-442, March.
    7. Patrick Bolton & Antoine Faure-Grimaud, 2010. "Satisficing Contracts," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 77(3), pages 937-971.
    8. Cesare Dosi & Michele Moretto, 2015. "Procurement with Unenforceable Contract Time and the Law of Liquidated Damages," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 31(1), pages 160-186.
    9. Jorge Montesinos & Eduardo Saavedra, 2012. "Algunos Alcances en torno a la Institucionalidad y Renegociación de Concesiones en la Infraestructura de Transporte de Uso Público en Perú," ILADES-UAH Working Papers inv277, Universidad Alberto Hurtado/School of Economics and Business.
    10. Nabil Al-Najjar & Luca Anderlini & Leonardo Felli, 2003. "Undescribable Contingencies," Discussion Papers 1370, Northwestern University, Center for Mathematical Studies in Economics and Management Science.
    11. J. Luis Guasch, 2004. "Granting and Renegotiating Infrastructure Concessions : Doing it Right," World Bank Publications - Books, The World Bank Group, number 15024.
    12. Paul Schweinzer, 2001. "Bilateral Uncertainty in a Model of Job-Market Screening with Intermediaries," Game Theory and Information 0108002, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 08 Jan 2002.
    13. Giovanni Maggi & Robert W. Staiger, 2008. "On the Role and Design of Dispute Settlement Procedures in International Trade Agreements," NBER Working Papers 14067, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

    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. Anderlini, Luca & Felli, Leonardo, 2004. "Bounded rationality and incomplete contracts," Research in Economics, Elsevier, vol. 58(1), pages 3-30, March.
    2. 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.
    3. 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.
    4. Sharon Novak & Scott Stern, 2008. "How Does Outsourcing Affect Performance Dynamics? Evidence from the Automobile Industry," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 54(12), pages 1963-1979, December.
    5. Iossa, Elisabetta & Martimort, David, 2016. "Corruption in PPPs, incentives and contract incompleteness," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 44(C), pages 85-100.
    6. Alberto Bacchiega & Gianni De Fraja, 2004. "Constitutional Design and Investment in Cooperatives and Investor‐Owned Enterprises," Annals of Public and Cooperative Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 75(2), pages 265-293, June.
    7. David A. Miller & Kareen Rozen, 2011. "Optimally Empty Promises and Endogenous Supervision," Levine's Working Paper Archive 786969000000000270, David K. Levine.
    8. Ying-Ju Chen & Xiaojian Zhao, 2013. "Solution Concepts of Principal-Agent Models with Unawareness of Actions," Games, MDPI, vol. 4(3), pages 1-24, August.
    9. Ola Kvaløy & Trond E. Olsen, 2016. "Incentive Provision when Contracting is Costly," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 83(332), pages 741-767, October.
    10. Dessi, Roberta, 2009. "Contractual Execution, Strategic Incompleteness and Venture Capital," TSE Working Papers 09-075, Toulouse School of Economics (TSE).
    11. M. Martin Boyer, 2004. "On the Use of Hierarchies to Complete Contracts when Players Have Limited Abilities," CIRANO Working Papers 2004s-41, CIRANO.
    12. Lorenzo Sacconi, 2001. "Incomplete contracts and corporate ethics: a game theoretical model under fuzzy information," LIUC Papers in Ethics, Law and Economics 91, Cattaneo University (LIUC).
    13. Toru Suzuki, 2020. "Efficiently Imprecise Contracts," Working Paper Series 2020/07, Economics Discipline Group, UTS Business School, University of Technology, Sydney.
    14. Sharon Novak & Scott Stern, 2007. "How Does Outsourcing Affect Performance Dynamics? Evidence from the Automobile Industry," NBER Working Papers 13235, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    15. Lewis A. Kornhauser & W. Bentley MacLeod, 2012. "Contracts between Legal Persons [The Handbook of Organizational Economics]," Introductory Chapters,, Princeton University Press.
    16. Pierpaolo Battigalli & Giovanni Maggi, 2008. "Costly contracting in a long‐term relationship," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 39(2), pages 352-377, June.
    17. Hideshi Itoh, 2023. "What do contracts do to facilitate relationships?," The Japanese Economic Review, Springer, vol. 74(3), pages 333-354, July.
    18. Alan Schwartz & Joel Watson, 2013. "Conceptualizing Contractual Interpretation," The Journal of Legal Studies, University of Chicago Press, vol. 42(1), pages 1-34.
    19. 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.
    20. Alan Schwartz & Joel Watson, "undated". "The Law and Economics of Costly Contracting," Yale Law School John M. Olin Center for Studies in Law, Economics, and Public Policy Working Paper Series yale_lepp-1004, Yale Law School John M. Olin Center for Studies in Law, Economics, and Public Policy.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Unforeseen contingencies; Incomplete contracts; Finite invariance; Fine variability;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D81 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Criteria for Decision-Making under Risk and Uncertainty

    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:cpr:ceprdp:3271. 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cepr.org .

    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.