Collaboration among people is often subject to shirking; the net gain from collaboration depends on the contract governing it. The author argues that the entrepreneur assumes the role of residual claimant because his actions are more costly to monitor than those of the factors with which he...

In this paper the author suggests that besides Frank Knight's well recognized "uncertainty" explanation of the firm, he had another one. "Moral hazard" is the central feature in the second, largely overlooked theory. The author argues, and attempts to document, that this theory is not a chance...

This paper argues that, in the middle ages, voting institutions emerged as mechanisms that allowed rulers to cooperate with subjects on mutually profitable projects. In spite of their utility, many of these voting institutions eventually declined. The authors test the model on the English...

Contract stipulations tend to be subject to commodity standards. Standards make it clearer what transactors have agreed upon. They also bring stipulations from different contracts under a common denominator. The lower the cost of measuring an attribute and the wider the range of its application,...