British Master and Servant law made employee contract breach a criminal offense until 1875. We develop a contracting … model generating equilibrium contract breach and prosecutions, then exploit exogenous changes in output prices to examine … prosecutions, and wages responded more to labor demand shocks. Coercive contract enforcement was applied in industrial Britain …

We model imperfect contract enforcement when repudiators and their victims default to spot trading. The interaction … between the contract and spot markets under improved enforcement can exacerbate repudiation and reduce contract execution …, harming all traders. Improved contract execution benefits traders on the excess side of the spot market by attracting …

We estimate the impact of venture capital (VC) contract terms on startup outcomes and the split of value between the … power to receive more investor-friendly terms compared to the contract that maximizes startup values. Better VCs still … certain contract terms benefits entrepreneurs and enables low-quality entrepreneurs to finance their startups more quickly …

procedures. A noisy signal, however, means that the optimal contract will involve terms that courts might view as punitive and so …