Scope economies (reflecting the benefit of a multioutput firm) have been defined by Baumol, Panzar, and Willig in the context of cost functions. This paperuses Luenberger's shortage function to develop a general measure of scope economies directly from the underlying technology. The analysis...

We ask how bargainers' incentives to communicate about more efficient widget designs depend on whether they negotiate price prior to, or after, fixing the traded design. We find three effects: (1) Since communication reveals information about preferences, bargainers with little power prefer to...

Very little principal-agent analysis has been done within the fisheries economic literature. This paper conducts a principal-agent analysis of fisheries. Within a standard principal-agent model, the low-cost agent must be allowed the same level of effort as under complete information. This...

Considering a principal-agent model in which the difficulty of the agent's action is better known ex interim than ex ante, we compare two contracting regimes; one with commitment to an ex ante negotiated contract, and one with an ex interim negotiated contract. The ex ante contract cannot have...

We examine the optimal organizational form of project evaluation and implementation under moral hazard. In the evaluation phase, two fallible risk-neutral agents sequentially screen projects. The approved projects are subsequently implemented in the development phase. We show that moral hazard...

An industry is modeled in which entrepreneurs, who are heterogeneous in ability, may produce formally or informally. Two cases are distinguished, with and without labour market segmentation, for which different patterns of formal/informal supply obtain. Without segmentation, informality may...

This paper analyzes the recent progress in the understanding of a class of organizations known as hybrid forms. The growing literature on these forms, standing between markets and hierarchies, raises important questions about their nature and role in a market economy. Adopting a transaction-cost...

The O-ring theory is used to analyze the emergence of firms organized as partnerships. The owner-managers of such entrepreneurial firms benefit from ability matching within their production teams. However, they must bear the project risk. Risk aversion then induces a second-best solution....

The information created and disseminated through the litigation process can have social value. Suppose a long-lived plaintiff is suing a defendant for damages sustained in an accident. The plaintiff may suffer similar damages in future accidents involving different defendants. Potential injurers...

We argue that the common-law standard of proof, given the rules of evidence, does not minimize expected error as usually argued in the legal literature, but may well be efficient from the standpoint of providing maximal incentives for socially desirable behavior. By contrast, civil law's higher...