IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ila/ilades/inv189.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Endogenous Verifiability and Optimality in Agency: A non-contingent approach

Author

Abstract

In the context of a principal-agent model where verification of an agent’s effort is endogenously determined through strategic interactions between contracting parties, we derive a necessary and suficient condition to achieve the first best with a non-contingent or incomplete contract. These conditions relate the Principal’s benefit, the Agent’s cost, the probability of winning and the cost of litigation. Also, these conditions are found to be more general than the ones established in Ishiguro (2002) within a similar setup.

Suggested Citation

  • Manuel Willington & Roy Costilla, 2007. "Endogenous Verifiability and Optimality in Agency: A non-contingent approach," ILADES-UAH Working Papers inv189, Universidad Alberto Hurtado/School of Economics and Business.
    • Handle: RePEc:ila:ilades:inv189
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://fen.uahurtado.cl/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/inv189.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Justin Zhang & Tian Zhu, 2000. "Verifiability, Incomplete Contracts and Dispute Resolution," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 9(3), pages 281-290, May.
    2. Bernardo, Antonio E & Talley, Eric & Welch, Ivo, 2000. "A Theory of Legal Presumptions," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 16(1), pages 1-49, April.
    3. Bernheim, B Douglas & Whinston, Michael D, 1998. "Incomplete Contracts and Strategic Ambiguity," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 88(4), pages 902-932, September.
    4. Manuel Willington, 2013. "Hold Up Under Costly Litigation and Imperfect Courts of Law," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 29(5), pages 1023-1055, October.
    5. Ola Kvaløy & Trond E. Olsen, 2009. "Endogenous Verifiability and Relational Contracting," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 99(5), pages 2193-2208, December.
    6. Ishiguro, Shingo, 2002. "Endogenous Verifiability and Optimality in Agency," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 105(2), pages 518-530, August.
    7. Donald B. Hausch & Yeon-Koo Che, 1999. "Cooperative Investments and the Value of Contracting," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 89(1), pages 125-147, March.
    8. Stefan Krasa & Anne P. Villamil, 2000. "Optimal Contracts when Enforcement Is a Decision Variable," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 68(1), pages 119-134, January.
    9. Edlin, Aaron S & Reichelstein, Stefan, 1996. "Holdups, Standard Breach Remedies, and Optimal Investment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 86(3), pages 478-501, June.
    10. Murat Usman, 2002. "Verifiability and Contract Enforcement: A Model with Judicial Moral Hazard," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 18(1), pages 67-94, April.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Hideshi Itoh, 2023. "What do contracts do to facilitate relationships?," The Japanese Economic Review, Springer, vol. 74(3), pages 333-354, July.
    2. Ola Kvaløy & Trond E. Olsen, 2009. "Endogenous Verifiability and Relational Contracting," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 99(5), pages 2193-2208, December.
    3. Hideshi Itoh & Hodaka Morita, 2015. "Formal Contracts, Relational Contracts, and the Threat-Point Effect," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 7(3), pages 318-346, August.
    4. David Martimort & Aggey Semenov & Lars Stole, 2017. "A Theory of Contracts with Limited Enforcement," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 84(2), pages 816-852.
    5. Göller, Daniel & Stremitzer, Alexander, 2014. "Breach remedies inducing hybrid investments," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 37(C), pages 26-38.
    6. Hideshi Itoh & Hodaka Morita, 2006. "Formal Contracts, Relational Contracts, and the Holdup Problem," CESifo Working Paper Series 1786, CESifo.
    7. Brooks, Richard & Stremitzer, Alexander, 2009. "On and Off Contract Remedies," Discussion Paper Series of SFB/TR 15 Governance and the Efficiency of Economic Systems 290, Free University of Berlin, Humboldt University of Berlin, University of Bonn, University of Mannheim, University of Munich.
    8. Manuel Willington, 2013. "Hold Up Under Costly Litigation and Imperfect Courts of Law," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 29(5), pages 1023-1055, October.
    9. Joel Watson, 2007. "Contract, Mechanism Design, and Technological Detail," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 75(1), pages 55-81, January.
    10. Alexander Stremitzer, 2012. "Standard Breach Remedies, Quality Thresholds, and Cooperative Investments," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 28(2), pages 337-359.
    11. Ishiguro, Shingo, 2002. "Endogenous Verifiability and Optimality in Agency," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 105(2), pages 518-530, August.
    12. Chongwoo Choe, 2006. "Optimal CEO Compensation: Some Equivalence Results," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 24(1), pages 171-201, January.
    13. Alessandro De Chiara, 2018. "Courts' Decisions, Cooperative Investments, and Incomplete Contracts," CEU Working Papers 2018_5, Department of Economics, Central European University.
    14. 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.
    15. Joel Watson, 2013. "Contract and Game Theory: Basic Concepts for Settings with Finite Horizons," Games, MDPI, vol. 4(3), pages 1-40, August.
    16. Andreas Roider, 2006. "Delegation of Authority as an Optimal (In)Complete Contract," Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics (JITE), Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, vol. 162(3), pages 391-411, September.
    17. Richard R.W. Brooks & Alexander Stremitzer, 2012. "On and Off Contract Remedies Inducing Cooperative Investments," American Law and Economics Review, American Law and Economics Association, vol. 14(2), pages 488-516.
    18. Castaneda, Marco A., 2006. "The hold-up problem in a repeated relationship," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 24(5), pages 953-970, September.
    19. Lewis A. Kornhauser & W. Bentley MacLeod, 2012. "Contracts between Legal Persons [The Handbook of Organizational Economics]," Introductory Chapters,, Princeton University Press.
    20. Ernst Fehr & Alexander Klein & Klaus M. Schmidt, "undated". "Fairness, Incentives and Contractual Incompleteness," IEW - Working Papers 072, Institute for Empirical Research in Economics - University of Zurich.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    incomplete contracts; endogenous verifiability; expectation damages.;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D20 - Microeconomics - - Production and Organizations - - - General
    • D86 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Economics of Contract Law
    • K41 - Law and Economics - - Legal Procedure, the Legal System, and Illegal Behavior - - - Litigation Process
    • M52 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Personnel Economics - - - Compensation and Compensation Methods and Their Effects

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:ila:ilades:inv189. 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: Mauricio Tejada (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/deilacl.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.