the hold up problem in government contracting a two period procurement model is considered in an incomplete contract framework in contrast to o hart and j moore 1988 the welfare maximizing government as the buyer is able to accomplish ex ante optimal contracts which guarantee first best specific investments of both buyer and seller these contracts are precisely characterized regardless of the underlying supports of cost and benefit distributions renegotiation inevitably occurs in some states of nature this renegotiation always increases the ex ante fixed trade price hence the empirical observation of soft budget constraints in government contracting can be rationalized furthermore in accordance with common beliefs the seller s rents accrue only at the production stage copyright 1996 by the editors of the scandinavian journal of economics

defence procurement theory and uk policy since the early 1980s competition as a means of obtaining best value for money has dominated uk defence procurement policy this paper describes the uk defense equipment market and the procurement problem there are sections on the economic theory of procurement contracting regulation and competition the conclusion evaluates uk defence procurement policy and assesses some of the policy issues for the 1990s copyright 1996 by oxford university press

personal carbon allowances a revised model to alleviate distributional issues abstract personal carbon allowances pcas are a policy proposal designed to facilitate carbon emissions reduction and engender carbon consciousness they were investigated by the uk government in 2006 2008 but subsequently shelved with continuing growth of atmospheric co2 concentrations and increasing interest in behaviour change agendas pcas are worthy of fresh development wide variation in energy usage between households of similar incomes implies that under the standard model of pcas significant numbers of low income high emitters would have to purchase top up allowances if pcas penalise some of the worst off in society it creates a major political obstacle to their introduction solving this distributional problem by allocating additional allowances to certain groups or offering compensatory state benefits has been investigated and appears costly and only partially effective this paper proposes a new mean max pca model whereby higher usage is necessary before purchase of top up allowances is required potentially highly effective but consequently the volumes and values of surplus and top up allowances become significantly different this difference renders free market carbon allowance trading unworkable potentially eliminating a hallmark but publicly unpopular pca feature the new model potentially offers the first solution to the distributional problem since it was highlighted in 2008

allowance price and distributional effects under a personal carbon trading scheme abstract personal carbon trading pct is a downstream cap and trade scheme to reduce carbon emissions from the household sector in comparison to an upstream carbon trading scheme pct is a progressive scheme in which the poorer consumers are mostly winners as their levels of emissions are generally lower this paper investigates the equilibrium price for allowances and distributional effects under a pct scheme first we propose an equilibrium model for pct from which we derive an equilibrium price for allowances second a consumer surplus analysis is conducted to examine the welfare changes caused by the pct scheme generally we find that the pct scheme is progressive and can provide a buffer between the energy and allowance price based on these results the implications are discussed and suggestions for a future study are provided

contractual solutions to the hold up problem this paper considers a general version of the hold up problem where n agents first make relation specific investments and then must agree on some collective action it is shown that first best solutions exist under a variety of different assumptions about the nature of information asymmetries

procurement contracting with time incentives theory and evidence in public procurement social welfare often depends on how quickly the good is delivered a leading example is highway construction where slow completion inflicts a negative externality on commuters in response highway departments award some contracts using scoring auctions which give contractors explicit incentives for accelerated delivery we characterize efficient design of these mechanisms we then gather an extensive data set of highway projects awarded by the california department of transportation between 2003 and 2008 by comparing otherwise similar contracts we show that where the scoring design was used contracts were completed 30 40 faster and the welfare gains to commuters exceeded the increase in procurement costs using a structural model that endogenizes participation and bidding we estimate that the counterfactual welfare gain from switching all contracts from the standard design to the efficient apb design is nearly 22 of the total contract value 1 14 billion copyright 2011 oxford university press

personal carbon trading a critical survey part 2 efficiency and effectiveness abstract equity efficiency and effectiveness are three key criteria use to assess environmental policy instruments part 1 of this survey shows that in terms of equity tradable energy quotas teqs a widely discussed personal carbon trading pct scheme cannot be differentiated from cap and dividend c d or cap and share c s hence part 2 explores whether they can be differentiated in terms of efficiency and or effectiveness the paper reviews two studies that compare the efficiency of teqs and c d whilst their estimates of the costs and abatement potential of teqs differ neither study considers that there is a case on efficiency grounds for its implementation the paper goes on to sketch two arguments for the implementation of pct that might nevertheless be made on efficiency grounds and one relating to public acceptability that might be made on effectiveness grounds exploring the various public surveys conducted on the acceptability of pct the paper concludes that support for pct is not obviously greater than for alternative instruments and notes a methodological limitation in the work reviewed the paper concludes that to date the case against implementation of pct is stronger than the case for

renegotiation design with unverifiable information this paper considers a buyer seller relationship with observable but unverifiable investments and or random utility parameters in such situations it is known that contract renegotiation may prevent the implementation of first best outcomes in this paper we show however that efficient investments and optimal risk sharing can typically be achieved provided the initial contract is able to monitor the ex post renegotiation process specifically we focus on the following two features of renegotiation design first default options in case renegotiation breaks down second the allocation of all bargaining power to either contracting party moreover we show that these two features can be obtained in standard rubinstein bargaining games through contractual provisions such as specific performance clauses and penalties for delay or equivalently financial hostages refundable without interest

renegotiation design and contract solutions to the hold up problem abstract this paper surveys the literature on contractual solutions to the hold up problem which has addressed the issue of how to design the optimal contractual arrangement to achieve efficient investments in the presence of contract incompleteness although scholars have argued that renegotiation design is a necessary condition to avoid the hold up problem some recent papers have seriously questioned this condition we mainly show that renegotiation design remains a necessary condition to implement efficient investments

incentives for monitoring quality we analyze a procurement problem in which the quality of the delivered product can be observed perfectly by the buyer and supplier but may not be verifiable i e may not be observable to any third party we present a set of plausible conditions under which the equilibrium welfare of both the buyer and supplier is higher when quality is verifiable than when it is unverifiable the welfare gain for the privately informed supplier arises even when the buyer has all the bargaining power thus the interests of the buyer and supplier coincide with regard to whether delivered quality should be made verifiable

quality vs quantity in military procurement it is often argued that the same expenditures on military procurement would produce a more effective defense if larger numbers of less sophisticated and thus cheaper weapons were purchased this paper shows that such a result can occur even if the military derives no private consumption value from technically sophisticated weapons rather the organization of the decision making process itself can produce this result this suggests some possible solutions through organizing decision making in a different fashion copyright 1990 by american economic association

can personal gasoline permit trading be effective an investigation into permit demand this study proposes a personal gasoline permit trading scheme to limit the total gasoline consumption thus reducing its environmental impact we studied the effectiveness of this scheme by analyzing the permit demand of a gasoline driven vehicle in transportation sector a general utility optimization model is formulated and a cobb douglas utility function is further assumed to analyze the response of permit demand to its price changes with the slutsky decomposition of price effects the results when defined in economic terms indicate that the permit demand of consumers in higher income groups are negatively related to permit price permit demand are also negatively related to permit price for consumers in medium income groups but with positive income effect and the direct relationship between permit demand of lower income groups and the price is defined as a giffen good effect that is for those low income groups when the permit price rises their demand for permits would also increase then us and singapore household expenditure data are used to show comparable results of a pilot personal gasoline permit trading scheme further some regulations on critical parameters such as permit allocation and permit prices in the policy design are proposed to make the scheme feasible in different income groups based on these results implications limitation and suggestions for future study are discussed

how elastic is the government s demand for weapons abstract we estimate the elasticity of the government s demand for specific weapons by econometric analysis of the relationship between quantity and cost revisions across the population of major weapon systems the cost revisions are due in part to technological information generated in the course of research and development the elasticity of demand is 0 55 and is significantly different from both zero and unity thus the government s demand for specific weapons is inelastic but not perfectly inelastic weapons acquisition is evidently characterized by increasing returns the elasticity of total cost with respect to quantity is about 0 75

smarter than metering coupling smart meters and complementary currencies to reinforce the motivation of households for energy savings a crucial argument in the debate around smart meter deployment in the eu is the potential for households to save energy one strand of research in this field has investigated the effects on household energy consumption of the feed back provided by smart meters however another aspect that deserves attention is the motivation for households to use the feed back to save energy this paper explores how the emerging trend of using complementary currencies for sustainability policies could translate into new interventions adapted to the smart meter deployment and capable of promoting more autonomous forms of motivation compared to interventions using official currencies three systems designs rewarding regulatory and hybrid are presented and discussed within the framework of self determination theory because the rewarding system s1 can contribute positively people s basic needs for autonomy competence and relatedness it could lead to more autonomous forms of motivation the conclusions regarding the regulatory system s2 are less clear although the hybrid variant s3 that integrates mechanisms from the rewarding system into the regulatory system could be perceived as more consonant with people s basic need for autonomy

investment incentives in bilateral trading abstract we characterize the surplus maximizing trading mechanism under two sided incomplete information and interim individual rationality when one party can make a value enhancing specific investment this mechanism exhibits a trade off between providing investment incentives and inducing voluntary participation we analyze how the trading area of the optimal mechanism is further distorted in order to provide investment incentives applications of our main results and the underlying geometric analysis to institutional design issues are also provided

does ecological economics have a future contradiction and reinvention in the age of climate change abstract this paper addresses the role of neoclassical methodologies in ecological economics and the contradictions these methodologies pose to the field s critical founding principles we first consider robert costanza s treatment of nicholas stern s global deal and then survey climate change related articles published in this journal over the past five years this survey reveals how mainstream neoclassical methodologies dominate discourse and do so by marginalizing more critical political economy analyses this situation imperils the field s founding vision of a no growth steady state it also fails to address the related growth dynamics of capitalism without such a critical treatment the field s formal embrace of methodological pluralism actually entails an ideological empiricism that renders ecological economics theoretically incoherent this situation undermines the field s historical promise as an alternative economic paradigm ecological economics now faces a problematic future its survival in a form faithful to its founding vision will require an explicit choice to address its internal contradictions and reinvent itself in ways relevant to our contemporary context without such a choice ecological economics will likely succumb to an implicit acceptance of the hegemony of mainstream economic methodologies and their pro growth imperatives

the interaction of implicit and explicit contracts in repeated agency abstract in a repeated principal agent model in which the agent s actions are observable to the principal but not verifiable in court the agent s incentives derive both from salary payments based on verifiable signals and from implicit promises by the principal of bonuses for good behavior explicit short term contracts are designed to enhance the effectiveness of the infinite horizon implicit contract between principal and agent in a constrained efficient equilibrium bonuses smooth the consumption path of the risk averse agent by moving in the opposite direction from salaries total consumption and expected discounted utility for the rest of the game journal of economic literature classification numbers c7 c73 d8

cooperative investments and the value of contracting recent articles have shown that contracts can support the efficient outcome for bilateral trade even in the face of specific investments and incomplete contracting these studies typically considered selfish investments that benefit the investor e g the seller s investment reduces her production costs the authors find very different results for cooperative investments that directly benefit the investor s partner e g the seller s investment improves the buyer s value of the good most importantly if committing not to renegotiate the contract is impossible then contracting has no value i e the parties cannot do better than to abandon contracting altogether in favor of ex post negotiation

information and the hold up problem we examine situations in which a party must make a sunk investment prior to contracting with a second party to purchase an essential complementary input we study how the resulting hold up problem is affected by the seller s information about the investing party s likely returns from its investment our principal focus is on the effects of the investment s being observable by the non investing party contrary to popular intuition we find that an improvement in the seller s information e g the investment s being observable rather than not can benefit the buyer and harm the seller we also find that other popular intuitions about this problem are either false incomplete or require strong assumptions to be valid

bargaining under incomplete information fairness and the hold up problem in the hold up problem incomplete contracts cause the proceeds of relation speciflc investments to be allocated by ex post bargaining the present paper investigates the e ciency of incomplete contracts if individuals have heterogeneous preferences implying heterogeneous bargaining behavior and equally important preferences are private information as the sunk investment costs can thus potentially signal preferences they can in uence beliefs and consequently bargaining outcomes the necessities of signalling are shown to generate very strong investment incentives these incentives are based on the desire not to reveal information that is unfavorable in the ensuing bargaining after flnding all perfect bayesian equilibria in pure strategies the paper derives the necessary and su cient conditions under which it is optimal to invest and trade e ciently

sunk investment bargaining and choice of capital structure this paper shows how a firm might optimally choose debt to affect the outcome of bilateral bargaining with workers or other input suppliers it is shown that debt may alleviate the well known underinvestment problem associated with the inability to write precommitment contracts also in such circumstances debt could be pareto improving over complete equity financing the relationship between the optimal level of debt and asset specificity of investment and bargaining power of the firm vis a vis the workers is explored the williamson conjecture that higher asset specificity will lead to less debt is shown not to be valid in general

vertical mergers and product differentiation this paper presents an equilibrium theory of vertical mergers that incorporates strategic behaviors in the hotelling type location model this enables one to consider the relationship between downstream firms strategies for product differentiation and vertical integration i show that vertical integration enhances the degree of product differentiation of the integrated firm under some conditions partial integration arises in equilibrium which may increase the profit of the nonintegrated downstream firm the paper also discusses the welfare implications of vertical integration

small firms in economic theory this is the fourth of a series of critical survey articles the aim of the series is to report on recent developments to provide an assessment of alternative approaches and to suggest lines of future inquiry it is intended that the articles will be accessible not only to other academic researchers but also to students and others more practically involved in the economy future survey articles will include warren samuels on institutional economics and philip arestis on post keynesian

does evolution solve the hold up problem abstract the paper examines the theoretical foundations of the hold up problem at the first stage one agent decides on the level of a relationship specific investment there is no contract so at the second stage the agent must bargain with a trading partner over the surplus that the investment has generated we show that the conventional underinvestment result hinges crucially both on the assumed bargaining game and on the choice of equilibrium concept in particular we prove the following two results i if bargaining proceeds according to the nash demand game any investment level is subgame perfect but only a particular efficient outcome is stochastically stable ii if bargaining proceeds according to the ultimatum game with the trading partner as proposer only the minimal investment level is subgame perfect but any investment level is stochastically stable journal of economic literature classification numbers l14 c78

the politics of compromise abstract an organization must select among competing projects that differ in their payoff consequences for its members each agent chooses a project and exerts effort affecting its completion time when one or more projects are complete the agents select which one to adopt the selection rule for multiple projects that maximizes ex post welfare leads to inefficiently high polarization rules that favor later proposals improve upon ex post optimal selections the optimal degree of favoritism increases in the cost of effort and discount rate this trade off informs the design of process rules in standard setting organizations and helps explain their performance jel c78 d23 d71 d72 d83 l15

research on the efficiency of carbon trading market in china abstract in 2014 china proposed medium and long term low carbon development goals in china u s joint statement on climate change that the emission of carbon dioxide would reach its peak and the proportion of non fossil energy accounted for the primary energy consumption would increase to 20 in 2030 in order to achieve these goals the unified carbon emission trading system should be put into effect by 2017 the implementation of the unified carbon emission trading system depends on the effectiveness of the current carbon trading market in china on the basis of the effective market theory and fair game model the unit root test and the run test are developed to analyze the carbon emission market of four representative cities in china the results show that 1 the carbon trading market in china has only achieved weak efficiency while the semi strong efficiency and the strong efficiency have not been reached 2 with the expansion of the market scale the increase of trading volume the carbon trading market would converge from the state of inefficiency to weak form efficiency gradually and the carbon trading market in china shows signs of restoring market efficiency

procurement and renegotiation parties bound by an incomplete contract have an incentive to renegotiate after acquiring new information the issue of the parties investment in the relationship before renegotiation is analyzed in a simple two period procurement model the firm invests in the first period it then learns its production cost and the sponsor learns its value for the project williamson s underinvestment presumption is shown to hold under very general assumptions about bargaining and about the ex post asymmetry of information as long as the firm s investment is not observable by the sponsor the introduction of a cancellation fee may well lead to even less investment contrary to what is sometimes argued the role of ex ante price fixing as an alternative way to reintroduce some form of commitment and the problem of cost overruns are discussed last it is shown that if investment is observable by the sponsor andthus may become a joint decision variable the two parties may choose to under or overinvest

efficiency improving investment and the ratchet effect abstract in a long term relationship between a regulator and a firm the production technology may change due to investment this paper investigates how the introduction of such an investment possibility influences the dynamic regulation problem when long term commitments are infeasible contractible investment is shown to reduce the ratchet effect by increasing separation in the first period due to the separation effect of investment the first period optimal scheme converges toward the optimal scheme with commitment as investment increases finally assuming noncontractible investment the paper analyzes the relationship between separation and the degree of under investment

union effects in low wage services evidence from canadian childcare empirical evidence presented in this paper based on survey data for canadian childcare workers in 1991 contradicts most stereotypes of the childcare labor market although childcare labor was low wage the authors find that the union impact on wages 15 and fringe benefits was in line with union effects found in other better compensated work and they find substantial returns to education occupational level and firm specific experience the returns to the skill related attributes were blunted somewhat in the union sector except where such returns stood to benefit the median union voter the findings suggest that monetary incentives can be used to encourage improvements in the education experience and skill acquisition of childcare workers unions can improve wages and benefits for childcare workers just as they can for most other workers suggesting the viability of union organizing in this sector despite the traditional barriers to organizing low wage service sector workers in small firms u nion organizing in the growing lowwage female dominated service sector is often regarded as key to offsetting the decline in union membership that is occurring in the areas of traditional union strength the recent success of the service

public acceptability of personal carbon trading and carbon tax abstract climate change is one of the greatest challenges confronting the international community requiring action to achieve deep cuts in carbon emissions the implementation of potentially uncomfortable but necessary policy measures is though critically dependent upon public acceptability this paper reports a novel application of stated preference techniques to explore the influence of key design attributes on the acceptability of a personal carbon trading scheme in isolation and when compared to a carbon tax illustrative forecasts from the models developed indicate the importance of design attributes especially the basis of the initial permit allocation for personal carbon trading and the use to which revenues are put for carbon tax results indicate that the best scheme designs could be acceptable to a majority of respondents

sequential equilibrium investment by regulated firms we examine the investment decisions of regulated firms in a sequential equilibrium model under asymmetric information the regulator is unable to commit to a pricing policy unlike mechanism design models but sets rates after observing the firm s investment the information conveyed by the firm s investment level alleviates the underinvestment observed under full information with limited regulatory commitment the equilibrium regulatory strategy can be characterized by a nonlinear rate of return schedule a regulator announcing such a schedule would be able to make a credible commitment

does hierarchical governance facilitate adaptation to changed circumstances abstract the transaction cost theory of economic organization maintains that by merging and adopting a hierarchical governance structure two firms can circumvent the bargaining problem which would impede adaptation to changing circumstances if they remained independent i analyze this claim in a simple model which allows the costs of hierarchical organization imperfect selective intervention to be evaluated alongside the costs due to the bargaining problem delays and disagreement both costs are due to informational asymmetries which are assumed to be unaffected by the choice of governance structure examples are presented which support the fundamental transaction cost proposition that hierarchical governance is preferred when parties are highly interspecific and there are significant gaps in the contract the intuition is that rational bargainers make less attractive offers in precisely those circumstances where adaptation is likely to be extremely valuable integration effectively separates the decision to adapt from the division of the resulting surplus and so is relatively efficient when substantial quasi rents are at stake

tiered gasoline pricing a personal carbon trading perspective abstract this paper proffers a tiered gasoline pricing method from a personal carbon trading perspective an optimization model of personal carbon trading is proposed and then an equilibrium carbon price is derived according to the market clearing condition based on the derived equilibrium carbon price this paper proposes a calculation method of tiered gasoline pricing then sensitivity analyses and consumers surplus analyses are conducted it can be shown that a rise in gasoline price or a more generous allowance allocation would incur a decrease in the equilibrium carbon price making the first tiered price higher but the second tiered price lower it is further verified that the proposed tiered pricing method is progressive because it would relieve the pressure of the low income groups who consume less gasoline while imposing a greater burden on the high income groups who consume more gasoline based on these results implications limitations and suggestions for future studies are provided

shared quality uncertainty and the introduction of indeterminate goods the purpose of this paper is to introduce a new category of goods indeterminate goods which will be compared with the classical framework of experience search and credence goods nelson 1970 darby and karni 1973 this concept sheds new light on the nature and status of quality uncertainty through the following hypothesis uncertainty about the product s quality can be shared by all agents of the market and this uncertainty can be non neutral and disrupt the market we identify three types of shared uncertainty about the product s characteristics and the corresponding problems that can arise shared uncertainty due to the emergence of a product hirschman 1974 shared uncertainty concerning the past of a product basing ourselves on the art market and finally shared uncertainty regarding the future impacts of a product through empirical data on product safety

after you sir hold up direct externalities and sequential investment we propose a solution to the hold up problem the parties in a contract can avoid the inefficiencies caused by the possibility of opportunistic behaviour and implement the first best level of investment if they make their investment decision sequentially one party observing the choice made by the other party before making his own choice unlike the existing literature the proposed solution leads to the efficient choice of investment even when there are two sided direct externalities journal of economic literatureclassification numbers d23 d82

hold up and the evolution of investment and bargaining norms abstract the purpose of this paper is to explore the evolution of bargaining norms in a simple production problem with two sided relationship specific investments and competition the puzzle we wish to address is why efficient bargaining norms do not evolve even though there exist efficient sequential equilibria conditions under which stochastically stable bargaining conventions exist are characterized and it is shown that there is a hierarchy of norms with a stochastically stable division rule that is independent of the long run investment strategy due to this independence efficient sequential equilibria are not in general stochastically stable this result may help us understand why institutions such as firms may be needed to ensure efficient relationship specific investments

using cost observation to regulate firms the paper emphasizes the use of accounting data in regulatory or procurement contracts when the supplier 1 has superior information about the cost of the project and 2 invests in cost reduction the main result states that under risk neutrality the supplier announces an expected cost and is given an incentive contract linear in cost overruns this optimal contract moves toward a fixed price contract as the announced cost decreases an investment choice is then introduced and the use of a rate of return regulation is studied

regulation with wage bargaining in many regulated industries labour unions are strong and there is clear empirical evidence of labour rent sharing in this paper we study optimal regulation in a model in which wages are determined endogenously by wage bargaining at the firm level a seemingly robust conclusion at least when worker bargaining power is considerable is that incentives for cost efficiency should be stronger than in the standard case in which wages do not depend on the regulatory regime

costly verification of cost performance and the competition for incentive contracts this article analyzes the optimal linear incentive contract to offer to would be agents competing for a principal s project when the principal finds it costly to observe an agent s cost performance ex post and cannot commit to monitoring policy ex ante cost sharing reduces the winning bidder s informational rents but creates an incentive for the agent to pad costs ex post to slacken his effort the optimal cost sharing parameter generally differs from that when monitoring is costless and it is higher the fewer the number of bidders and the larger the variance of their idiosyncratic cost

two sided markets a progress report the paper provides a road map to the burgeoning literature on two sided markets and presents new results it identifies two sided markets with markets in which the structure and not only the level of prices charged by platforms matters the failure of the coase theorem is necessary but not sufficient for two sidedness the paper builds a model integrating usage and membership externalities that unifies two hitherto disparate strands of the literature emphasizing either form of externality and obtains new results on the mix of membership and usage charges when price setting or bargaining determine payments between end users

innovation market structure and the holdup problem investment incentives and coordination abstract i analyze the innovation incentives under monopoly and duopoly provision of horizontally differentiated products purchased via bilateral negotiations integrating the market structure and innovation literature with the holdup literature i show that competition can improve local incentives for non contractible investment because innovation levels are generally strategic substitutes however there can be multiple duopoly equilibria in some circumstances monopoly can provide a coordination device that can lead to greater expected welfare despite inferior local innovation incentives the conditions for this to be the case however are quite restrictive

vertical integration as a source of hold up while vertical integration is traditionally seen as a solution to the hold up problem this article highlights instead that it can generate hold up problems for rivals we consider a successive duopoly where downstream firms invest and then secure support from an upstream supplier we first show that vertical integration generates ex ante incentives to create hold up problems an integrated supplier is willing to pre commit itself to appropriating or dissipating part of its customer s profits to expose the independent rival to being held up by the other supplier and discourage in this way the rival s investment we then show that even in the absence of any pre commitment vertical integration also creates hold up problems ex post when degrading the quality of the support provided to one downstream firm benefits its rival we also provide illustrations in terms of standard industrial organization models and of antitrust cases and discuss the robustness of the insights

hold up with a vengeance when contracts are incomplete or unenforceable inefficient levels of investment may occur because of hold up if individuals care for negative reciprocity these problems may be reduced as revenge becomes a credible threat however negative reciprocity has this effect only when the investor holds the rights of control of the investment proceeds we explore this issue analytically deriving predictions for hold up games which differ as regards assignment of rights of control we also test and support these predictions in an experiment

short term contracting and strategic oil reserves the effect of short term contracting on resource extraction is studied in a two country model of international trade in oil countries planners are assumed to be fully rational with perfect information and perfect foresight contracts are assumed perfectly enforceable and complete except that short term contracts do not allow commitments to actions taken beyond the contract period we show that short term contracting limits countries opportunities for intertemporal consumption smoothing reducing their collective tolerance for temporal variation in consumption this tends to make them extract more slowly than in the efficient plan that results from long term contracting contractual relationships often outlive the contracts that govern them it is therefore common for a long term relationship to be governed by a sequence of short term contracts when these contracts allow complete control of the organization of the relationship within each contract period any outcome that can be achieved in a long term contract covering the entire life of the relationship is also feasible with a sequence of short term contracts short term contracting can nevertheless have significant effects on resource allocation because each contract must be voluntarily negotiated in the environment created by its predecessors an allocation that is acceptable to both parties as a long term contract might not be voluntarily negotiable as a sequence of short term contracts because short term contracting is so prevalent it is worth asking what sorts of relationship can be organized efficiently only by long term contract and what kinds of distortion are caused by short term contracting two kinds of answers to these questions have been given in the literature one important line of investigation considers the use of memory in contracts designed to control parties incentives under asymmetric information baron and besanko 1985 rubinstein and yaari 1983 sanchez and zapater 1985 stiglitz and weiss 1983 tirole 1986 and townsend 1982 among others have shown how parties can use

union effects on teacher productivity this paper examines the effect of collective bargaining on several factors known to be determinants of student achievement in the public schools particularly its effect on the teacher s allocation of time among various activities estimates based on a national survey show that bargaining appears to reduce time spent in instruction to increase the level of education of teachers and to increase the number of administrators all differences associated with lower student achievement on the other hand bargaining tends to increase the time teachers spend in class preparation the experience level of teachers and the teacher student ratio differences associated with higher student achievement the net effect of collective bargaining on teacher productivity is therefore not clear at this time

reputation as a mechanism alleviating opportunistic host government behavior against mnes the strategic options available to multinational enterprises and host governments when the first contemplate investment in the latter s country are marked by the possibility that no entry eventually will take place as a response to opportunistic behavior on the part of th e host government this article examines under which circumstances and how in a dynamic world with asymmetric information reputation building by the host government can credibly alleviate this opportunistic behavior leaving a safer climate for multinational enterprises investment copyright 1993 by blackwell publishing ltd

incentives in incentive contracting an application of the mimic model a handful of empirical studies have endeavoured to analyse the cost containment effectiveness of the incentive contracts that the department of defence has used for its acquisition of weapon systems a serious omission from all of these studies has been a consideration of the motivation of contractors to renegotiate these contracts many times since contract modification is an important and recognized part of incentive contracting it is surprising that so little attention has been paid to the contractor s incentive to seek these modifications the purpose of this paper is to examine empirically the effects of incentive contract cost sharing provisions and contract renegotiations on contractor cost savings effort

optimal information transmission in a holdup problem this article examines the optimal contract in a bilateral trade model with unobservable relationship specific investment and renegotiation in such a setting a contract plays an additional role that it does not have in the standard holdup model namely that of transmitting information between the parties the article shows that a partial disclosure contract may be optimal and describes the optimal contract if the investment is cooperative and the information between the trading parties is asymmetric the optimal contract generally cannot result in the first best but dispensing with either of these assumptions makes the first best achievable

how to improve the market efficiency of carbon trading a perspective of china abstract emissions trading scheme ets is one of the effective measures to realize energy conservation and emission reduction in order to set up a nationwide carbon emissions trading mechanism seven ets pilots have been launched in china firstly based on empirical investigation and research of seven pilots this paper analyzed the market efficiency of ets pilots from four aspects carbon price trading volume market liquidity and information transparency the result showed that the market efficiency of ets pilots is not satisfactory in spite of the fact that system designs of ets have achieved preliminary result then the reason for low market efficiency of ets pilots was discussed from some factors such as institutional arrangements market participants the supply and demand etc finally this paper puts forward some policy suggestions to improve the market efficiency of china s carbon trading market

investing in a relationship a principal can make an investment anticipating a repeated relationship with an agent but the agent may appropriate the returns through ex post bargaining i study how this holdup problem and efficiency depend on the contracting environment when investment returns are observable informal contracts ex post can be more efficient than formal contracts as they induce higher investment ex ante the principal invests not only to generate direct returns but also to improve relational incentives unobservability of returns increases the principal s ability to appropriate the returns but reduces her ability to improve incentives the optimal information structure depends on bargaining power

unobserved investment endogenous quality and trade a seller can make investments that affect a tradable asset s future returns the potential buyer of the asset cannot observe the seller s investment prior to trade nor does he receive any signal of it nor can he verify it in anyway after trade despite this severe moral hazard problem this paper shows the seller will invest with positive probability in equilibrium and that trade will occur with positive probability the outcome of the game is sensitive to the distribution of bargaining power between the parties with a holdup problem existing if the buyer has the bargaining power a consequence of the holdup problem is surplus reducing distortions in investment level perhaps counterintuitively in many situations this distortion involves an increase in the expected amount invested vis a vis the situation without holdup

incomplete contracts specific investments and risk sharing an optimal contract design problem is considered contracts which are incomplete and simple are used to investigate the extent to which constrained revisions can mitigate inefficiencies resulting from contractual incompleteness an optimal contract is characterized in two cases first when a contract is being used to facilitate trade between two risk neutral parties who must make relationship specific investments it is possible to implement the first best by a simple contract second when a contract is being used to share risk it is generally not possible to implement the first best when one party is risk neutral however it is possible to implement the first best by assigning all the ex post decision rights to that party

is unionization compatible with professionalism this study examines over 100 collective bargaining agreements covering a wide range of professions and organizations to assess the continuing fundamental debate over the compatibility of unionization with professionalism the author finds that some contractual provisions affecting professional standards participation in organizational decision making and other issues of professional concern support traditional professional values and some do not this mixed evidence challenges claims that unionization necessarily involves the rejection of professionalism

a multistage model of bargaining this paper presents a simple multistage model of bargaining wherein a seller makes an offer that can be either accepted or refused if rejected the process continues how the seller s ability to make commitments affects bargaining outcomes is analysed by comparing the commitment equilibria to those arising when commitment is impossible the effects of increasing uncertainty about preferences and varying the length of the bargaining horizon are analysed the ways in which the bargaining environment can be changed to improve outcomes are discussed

sequential bargaining with incomplete information this paper describes a simple two person two period bargaining game and solves it using the concept of perfect bayesian equilibrium in which the actions of each player convey information which is used by his opponent the paper examines the effects of changes in bargaining costs the size of the contract zone and the length of the bargaining process on such aspects of the solution as the probability of impasse and the likelihood of concessions the combination of information transfer and the lack of pre commitment embodied in perfectness yields many surprising results common perceptions about the effects of parameter changes on bargaining processes are suspect and should be checked in the particular game being discussed

public goods and the hold up problem under asymmetric information an agent can make an observable but non contractible investment a principal then offers to collaborate with the agent to provide a public good private information of the agent about his valuation may either decrease or increase his investment incentives depending on whether he learns his type before or after the investment stage