IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/tiu/tiucen/6f3c7c98-ae1f-4113-a230-115aecf89880.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Contentious Contracts

Author

Listed:
  • Hege, U.

    (Tilburg University, Center For Economic Research)

  • Viala, P.

Abstract

This paper offers an explanation of rationally incomplete contracts, where incompleteness refers to unforeseen contingencies. Agents enter a two-sided moral hazard relationship, in which a commitment to discard parts of the joint resources may be ex-ante efficient. This happens through costly legal dispute which arises when contract terms are missing for undesirable outcomes. We show that an optimal contract needs only to specify the obligation for the more litigious party to assure a certain output level – the threshold between foreseen and unforeseen contingencies – and a linear sharing rule for the foreseen contingencies. If litigation reveals some information about the effort levels of the agents, less costly dispute is typically needed and the allocation will improve.
(This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)

Suggested Citation

  • Hege, U. & Viala, P., 1997. "Contentious Contracts," Discussion Paper 1997-109, Tilburg University, Center for Economic Research.
    • Handle: RePEc:tiu:tiucen:6f3c7c98-ae1f-4113-a230-115aecf89880
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://pure.uvt.nl/ws/portalfiles/portal/527975/109.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Rogerson, William P, 1985. "The First-Order Approach to Principal-Agent Problems," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 53(6), pages 1357-1367, November.
    2. Yeon-Koo Che & Tai-Yeong Chung, 1999. "Contract Damages and Cooperative Investments," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 30(1), pages 84-105, Spring.
    3. Sugato Bhattacharyya & Francine Lafontaine, 1995. "Double-Sided Moral Hazard and the Nature of Share Contracts," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 26(4), pages 761-781, Winter.
    4. 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.
    5. Luca Anderlini & Leonardo Felli, 1996. "Costly Contingent Contracts," STICERD - Theoretical Economics Paper Series /1996/313, Suntory and Toyota International Centres for Economics and Related Disciplines, LSE.
    6. Douglas W. Diamond, 1984. "Financial Intermediation and Delegated Monitoring," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 51(3), pages 393-414.
    7. repec:cep:stitep:313 is not listed on IDEAS
    8. Alchian, Armen A & Demsetz, Harold, 1972. "Production , Information Costs, and Economic Organization," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 62(5), pages 777-795, December.
    9. Legros, Patrick & Matsushima, Hitoshi, 1991. "Efficiency in partnerships," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 55(2), pages 296-322, December.
    10. Cooter, Robert D & Rubinfeld, Daniel L, 1989. "Economic Analysis of Legal Disputes and Their Resolution," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 27(3), pages 1067-1097, September.
    11. Townsend, Robert M., 1979. "Optimal contracts and competitive markets with costly state verification," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 21(2), pages 265-293, October.
    12. Douglas Gale & Martin Hellwig, 1985. "Incentive-Compatible Debt Contracts: The One-Period Problem," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 52(4), pages 647-663.
    13. Steven Shavell, 1984. "The Design of Contracts and Remedies for Breach," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 99(1), pages 121-148.
    14. Jewitt, Ian, 1988. "Justifying the First-Order Approach to Principal-Agent Problems," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 56(5), pages 1177-1190, September.
    15. Hart, Oliver, 1995. "Firms, Contracts, and Financial Structure," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780198288817.
    16. Sinclair-Desgagne, Bernard, 1994. "The First-Order Approach to Multi-signal Principal-Agent Problems," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 62(2), pages 459-466, March.
    17. Kennan, John & Wilson, Robert, 1993. "Bargaining with Private Information," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 31(1), pages 45-104, March.
    18. Urs Schweizer, 1989. "Litigation and Settlement under Two-Sided Incomplete Information," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 56(2), pages 163-177.
    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. Constanza M. Fosco Perea M, "undated". "Ambigüedad estratégica en contratos públicos de suministro," ILADES-UAH Working Papers inv127, Universidad Alberto Hurtado/School of Economics and Business.

    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. W. Bentley MacLeod, 2006. "Reputations, Relationships and the Enforcement of Incomplete Contracts," CESifo Working Paper Series 1730, CESifo.
    2. Committee, Nobel Prize, 2016. "Oliver Hart and Bengt Holmström: Contract Theory," Nobel Prize in Economics documents 2016-1, Nobel Prize Committee.
    3. Eduard Marinov, 2016. "The 2016 Nobel Prize in Economics," Economic Thought journal, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences - Economic Research Institute, issue 6, pages 97-149.
    4. Santos, Joao C., 1997. "Debt and equity as optimal contracts," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 3(4), pages 355-366, December.
    5. Lewis A. Kornhauser & W. Bentley MacLeod, 2012. "Contracts between Legal Persons [The Handbook of Organizational Economics]," Introductory Chapters,, Princeton University Press.
    6. Grenadier, Steven R. & Wang, Neng, 2005. "Investment timing, agency, and information," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 75(3), pages 493-533, March.
    7. ATTAR, Andréa, 2003. "Financial contracting along the business cycle," LIDAM Discussion Papers CORE 2003069, Université catholique de Louvain, Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (CORE).
    8. Scheepens, J.P.J.F., 1993. "Bankruptcy litigation and optimal debt contracts," Other publications TiSEM 64e785e4-4101-4604-a392-3, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    9. Keiichiro Kobayashi & Tomoyuki Nakajima, 2014. "A macroeconomic model of liquidity crises," KIER Working Papers 876, Kyoto University, Institute of Economic Research.
    10. Khalil, Fahad & Martimort, David & Parigi, Bruno, 2007. "Monitoring a common agent: Implications for financial contracting," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 135(1), pages 35-67, July.
    11. Mathias Dewatripont & Patrick Legros & Steven A. Matthews, 2003. "Moral Hazard and Capital Structure Dynamics," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 1(4), pages 890-930, June.
    12. Schmidt, Klaus, 2017. "The 2016 Nobel Memorial Prize in Contract Theory," Rationality and Competition Discussion Paper Series 19, CRC TRR 190 Rationality and Competition.
    13. Mario Tirelli, 2017. "Optimal Financial Contracts With Unobservable Investments," Departmental Working Papers of Economics - University 'Roma Tre' 0230, Department of Economics - University Roma Tre.
    14. Kim, Son Ku & Wang, Susheng, 1998. "Linear Contracts and the Double Moral-Hazard," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 82(2), pages 342-378, October.
    15. Lang, Matthias, 2019. "Communicating subjective evaluations," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 179(C), pages 163-199.
    16. 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.
    17. M. Martin Boyer, 2004. "On the Use of Hierarchies to Complete Contracts when Players Have Limited Abilities," CIRANO Working Papers 2004s-41, CIRANO.
    18. Davide IACOVONI & Alberto ZAZZARO, 2000. "Legal System Efficiency, Information Production, and Technological Choice: A Banking Model," Working Papers 129, Universita' Politecnica delle Marche (I), Dipartimento di Scienze Economiche e Sociali.
    19. Gersbach, Hans & Uhlig, Harald, 2006. "Debt contracts and collapse as competition phenomena," Journal of Financial Intermediation, Elsevier, vol. 15(4), pages 556-574, October.
    20. Scheepens, J.P.J.F., 1993. "Bankruptcy litigation and optimal debt contracts," Discussion Paper 1993-27, Tilburg University, Center for Economic Research.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    incomplete contracts; unforeseen contingencies; burning money; team production; contract law;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design
    • K12 - Law and Economics - - Basic Areas of Law - - - Contract Law

    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:tiu:tiucen:6f3c7c98-ae1f-4113-a230-115aecf89880. 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: Richard Broekman (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://center.uvt.nl .

    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.