An important theme of modern contract theory is the role contracts play to protect parties from the risk of holdup and thereby encouraging their relationship specific investments. While this perspective has generated valuable insights about various contracts, the underyling models abstract from...

The holdup problem arises when parties negotiate to divide the surplus generated by their ex ante noncontractable investments. We study this problem in a model which, unlike the stylized static model, allows the parties to continue to invest until they agree on the terms of trade. These possible...

Hold-up arises when part of the return on an agent’s relationship-specific investments is ex post expropriable by his trading partner. The hold-up problem has played an important role as a foundation of modern contract and organization theory, as the associated inefficiencies have justified...