Termination Clauses in Partnerships

In this paper, we prove that two firms can choose not to include a termination clause in their partnership contract, thus inducing a costly termination in case of failure of the joint project. This ex-post inefficiency induces partners to exert large non-contractible efforts (investments) to decrease the probability of failure. Therefore, the absence of a termination clause works as a ``discipline device''\ that mitigates the moral hazard problem within the partnership. We show that writing a contract without a termination clause is a credible commitment even when partners can add such a clause in the contract in any moment of their relationship.