The government wants a certain good or service to be provided. Should the required assets be publicly or privately owned or should a partnership be formed? Building on the incomplete contracting approach, we argue that the initially specified quantity of an ex ante describable basic good can...

Contractual execution generates hard information, available to the contracting parties, even when contracts are secretly executed. Building on this simple observation, the paper shows that incomplete contracts can be preferred to complete contracts. This is because (i) execution of incomplete...

We consider a simple trading relationship between an expectation-based loss-averse buyer and profit-maximizing sellers. When writing a long-term contract the parties have to rely on renegotiations in order to ensure materially efficient trade ex post. The type of the concluded long-term contract...

An inventor can invest research effort to come up with an innovation. Once an innovation is made, a contract is negotiated and unobservable effort must be exerted to develop a product. In the absence of liability constraints, the inventor's investment incentives are increasing in his bargaining...

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...

This article explores the specific contribution of recent literature on incomplete contracts in comparison with the acontractual Walrasian general equilibrium as well as the complete optimal contracts of the Agency theory regarding the institutional identity of agents. It underlines a tension...

In this paper we conduct a laboratory experiment to test the extent to which Moore and Repullo’s subgame perfect implementation mechanism induces truth-telling in practice, both in a setting with perfect information and in a setting where buyers and sellers face a small amount of uncertainty...

In this paper we conduct a laboratory experiment to test the extent to which Moore and Repullo's subgame perfect implementation mechanism induces truth-telling in practice, both in a setting with perfect information and in a setting where buyers and sellers face a small amount of uncertainty...

The government and a non-governmental organization (NGO) can invest in the provision of a public good. In an incomplete contracting framework, Besley and Ghatak (2001) have argued that the party who values the public good most should be the owner. We show that this conclusion relies on their...

We consider a simple trading relationship between an expectation-based loss-averse buyer and profit-maximizing sellers. When writing a long-term contract the parties have to rely on renegotiations in order to ensure materially efficient trade ex post. The type of the concluded long-term contract...