Opportunisme ou équité ? Le cas des contrats d'approvisionnement de défense
How are extra costs resulting from the occurrence of unanticipated risks allocated in a procurement setting? This paper develops a theoretical framework combining transaction cost economics with equity theory in order to explain why parties endorse cooperative strategies, basically a 50-50 sharing rule, that prevail over their propensity to behave opportunistically. We derive two propositions that we test on a dataset of 48 contracts in the French defence procurement. We find that perception of equity turns out to be a key factor in the contractual relationship. This interpretation challenges the prevailing interpretation of a key assumption in transaction cost economics.