We look at a principal-agent model in which the agent has to perform an action, the difficulty of which is better known ex interim than ex ante. We compare two contracting regimes; one with commitment to an ex ante negotiated contract, and one with an ex interim negotiated contract. The ex ante...

Research on the organization of systems industries generally takes the boundaries of platforms to be exogenously-determined artifacts, given by the nature of technology. This paper studies whether platform boundaries are responsive to economic incentives by studying variation in platform...

The article proposes a research program to compare game forms in terms of their ability to govern ex post adjustments to ex ante contracts. The comparisons can be based on direct implementation-costs or the extent to which desirable adjustments are not implemented. In several examples of the...

The paper is a study of barriers to communication in terms of agents' incentives to search for and communicate complementary information. In particular, I look at the value of commitment by comparing game forms in which a contract is negotiated prior to, versus after, search and communication. I...

The Resource-Based View of the firm (RBV) posits as a necessary condition for diversification that a firm's resources can be leveraged beyond its original business. To achieve sufficiency we need to know whether the resource is best leveraged inside the firm or through a market contract. We...