We analyze the role of implicit contracts' (that is, informal agreements supported byquot; reputation rather than law) both within firms, for example in employment relationships between them, for example as hand-in-glove supplier relationships. We find that the optimalquot; organizational form...

Objective measures of performance are seldom perfect. In response, incentive contracts often include important subjective components that mitigate incentive distortions caused by imperfect objective measures. This paper explores the combined use of subjective and objective performance measures...

We study relationships between parties who have different preferences about how to tailor decisions to changing circumstances. Our model suggests that relational contracts supported by formal contracts may achieve efficient relational adaptation. Our empirics consider revenue-sharing contracts...

Measured individual performance often depends on random factors which also affect the performances of other workers in the same firm, industry, or market. In these cases, relative performance evaluation (RPE) can provide incentives while partially insulating workers from the common uncertainty....

We combine Simon's conception of relational contracts with Grossman and Hart's focus on asset ownership. We analyze whether transactions should occur under vertical integration or non-integration, and with or without self-enforcing relational contracts. These four models allow us to re-run the...

Economic performance depends crucially on how parties adapt to changing circumstances. We therefore study how the organization of economic activity can facilitate such adaptation. Where spot transactions would produce inefficient adaptation, we ask how governance structures (allocations of...

This paper studies career concerns -- concerns about the effects of current performance on future compensation -- and describes how optimal incentive contracts are affected when career concerns are taken into account. Career concerns arise frequently: they occur whenever the market uses a...

We analyze a rational-expectations model of price formation in an intermediate-good market under uncertainty. There is a continuum of dyads, each consisting of an upstream party and a downstream party. Both parties can make specific investments at private cost. As in property-rights models,...

We analyze a rational-expectations model of price formation in an intermediate-good market under uncertainty. There is a continuum of dyads, each consisting of an upstream party and downstream party. Both parties can make specific investments at private cost, and there is a machine that either...

We analyze a rational-expectations model of information acquisition and price formation in an intermediate-good market: prices and net supply are non-negative, there are no noise traders, and the intermediate good has multiple potential uses. Several of our results differ from the classic...