We provide evidence that long-term relationships between trading parties emerge endogenously in the absence of third party enforcement of contracts and are associated with a fundamental change in the nature of market interactions. Without third party enforcement, the vast majority of trades are...

We study the impact of reputational incentives in markets characterized by moral hazard problems. Social preferences have been shown to enhance contract enforcement in these markets, while at the same time generating considerable wage and price rigidity. Reputation powerfully amplifies the...

This paper applies the theory of relational contracts to make precise the idea that because households are engaged in a repeated non-cooperative game, Pareto efficient outcomes can be supported by self interest, given the specific pattern of specialisation and exchange which exists in the...

When unemployment prevails, relations with a particular firm are valuable for workers. As a consequence, a worker may adhere to an implicit agreement to provide high effort, even when performance is not third-party enforceable. But can implicit agreements – or relational contracts – also...

Experimental studies have consistently shown that cooperative outcomes can emerge even in finitely repeated games. Such outcomes are justified by existing reputation building models, which suggest that cooperative outcomes can be sustained if some subjects have other-regarding preferences. While...

This paper studies how altruism between managers and employees affects relational incentive contracts. To this end we develop a simple dynamic principal-agent model where both players may have feelings of altruism or spite toward each other. The con- tract may contain two types of incentives for...

We use economic experiments to examine the nature of relational trading under a menu of incomplete contracts ranging from the repeat purchase mechanism of Klein and Leffler (1981) to highly incomplete contracts that are completely unenforceable by third-parties. Our results suggest that, with...

In the Western world, multiculturalism has become the way to view and form "nationhood," igniting the interest to understand and model identity. The complexity of identity formation, however, has been firm and ethnic and national identities have been deviating more and more. In this paper, we...