For decades, the OECD constituted an economic and political "club" of Western countries focused around the transatlantic axis. Today, it faces unprecedented challenges as the world economy shifts to the East and the South. In response, the OECD is undergoing meaningful reform: it is becoming...

The focus of this study is on black markets which provide an important segment of the parallel economy. These markets operate in disequilibrium,search and information costs become very important.Trafficking in drugs taken as case, to explore both theoretically and empirically. The problem,...

Service adaptations, when there is changing demand or problems regarding the service provision, constitute a major issue in Public Private Partnerships (PPPs). So far, studies have explained the ex post adaptation problems by the distorted incentives for the private public-service provider to...

This article analyzes a much debated clause in the 1996 coalition contract between SPD and F.D.P. in Rheinland-Pfalz. Two parties write a contract, based on which decisions under incomplete information have to be made at a later point in time. It is shown that a complex complete contract can...

More than twenty years have elapsed since Oliver Hart's Fisher-Schultz lecture on the topic of incomplete contracts. Incomplete contract theory (ICT) has become a rigorous and widely used approach in dealing with various issues. It's applications include firm theory (hierarchies, ownership and...

This paper investigates, in a simple risk-sharing framework, the extent to which the incompleteness of contracts could be attributed to the complexity costs associated with the writing and the implementation of contracts. We show that, given any measure of complexity in a very general class, it...

An inventor can invest research effort to come up with an innovation. Once an innovation is made, a contract is negotiated and unobservable effort must be exerted to develop a product. In the absence of liability constraints, the inventor's investment incentives are increasing in his bargaining...

An agent can make an observable but non-contractible investment. A principal then offers to collaborate with the agent to provide a public good. Private information of the agent about his valuation may either decrease or increase his investment incentives, depending on whether he learns his type...

This article explores the specific contribution of recent literature on incomplete contracts in comparison with the acontractual Walrasian general equilibrium as well as the complete optimal contracts of the Agency theory regarding the institutional identity of agents. It underlines a tension...

We reconsider the property rights approach to the theory of the firm based on incomplete contracts. We explore the implications of different degrees of relationship-specificity when there are two parties, A and B, who can make investments in physical capital (instead of human capital). If...