This paper examines the sharing of risk under three different remedies for breach of contract. The risk considered arises from the possibility that, after a seller and buyer have entered into an agreement for the exchange of some (not generally available) good, a third party who values the good...

Both types of legal intervention in contracts and their modifications -- voiding without regard to price and control of price -- are used by courts to counter problems of pronounced holdup. Also, various price control regulations appear to serve the same objective, at least in part, for instance...

Post-communist countries offer new evidence on the relative importance of courts and relationships in enforcing contracts. Belief in the effectiveness of courts has a significant positive effect on the level of trust shown in new relationships between firms and their customers. Well-functioning...

Natural resources such as carbon, water, and fish are increasingly managed with markets that require an initial allocation of property rights. In practice these rights are typically grandfathered based on historical use, but rights could be allocated any number of ways. Taking the perspective of...

Regulation of economic activity is ubiquitous around the world, yet standard theories predict it should be rather uncommon. I argue that the ubiquity of regulation is explained not so much by the failure of markets, or by asymmetric information, as by the failure of courts to solve contract and...

We use cross-national harmonized micro data from a broad sample of developed and developing countries and investigate the heterogeneity of the effect of entry, contract enforcement regulation, and financial development on both the decision to become an entrepreneur and the level of employment of...

Where legal systems and market forces enforce contracts inadequately, vertical integration can circumvent these transaction difficulties. But, such environments often also feature highly interventionist government, and even corruption. Vertical integration might then enhance returns to political...

We compare the economic consequences and political feasibility of reforms aimed at reducing barriers to entry (deregulation) and improving contractual enforcement (legal reform). Deregulation fosters entry, thereby increasing the number of firms (entrepreneurship) and the average quality of...

Contract law governs agreements between parties. This paper contains the chapters on contract law from a general, forthcoming book, Foundations of Economic Analysis of Law (Harvard University Press, 2003). Chapter 13 presents an overview of the subject. Chapter 14 is concerned with contract...

We examine how the U.S. Federal Government governs R&D contracts with private-sector firms. The government chooses between two contractual forms: grants and cooperative agreements. The latter provides the government substantially greater discretion over, and monitoring of, project progress....