When procurement contracts are incomplete, they are frequently changed after the contract is awarded to the lowest bidder. This results in a final cost that differs from the initial price, and may involve significant transaction costs due to renegotiation. We propose a stylized model of bidding...

We consider a partnership game with two roles in which a large population of firms interact to carry out, say, R&D joint ventures. The partners have to build a common-property asset through a sequence of costly investments. Firms have access to a monitoring technology whose cost depends on the...

In order to regulate the proliferated bioprospecting and protect the biological diversity in the source countries, the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) established a legal framework for the reciprocal transfer of biological materials between the interested parties in bioprospecting...

This paper explores the use of a micro-economic model to analyse the provisions and parties of bioprospecting contracts. It focuses on the pharmaceutical industry as the representative biodiversity buyer, presenting an original theoretical framework that explains the main contract...

There are more and more industries in which firms are specialized in the production of a component of the final good. This is especially true in high-tech industries. The basic question is why don't these firms merge ? We paradoxically show that industries which are typical candidates for...

This paper addresses the question of delegation in an organisation where there is an initial asymmetry of information between the principal and the agent. We assume that the principal cannot use revelation techniques à la Baron Myerson to elicit agent's superior information and in contrast, we...

The industrial organization of developing countries is characterized by the pervasive use of subcontracting arrangements among small, financially constrained firms. This paper asks whether vertical integration relaxes those financial constraints. It shows that vertical integration trades off the...

In this paper, we compare two different representations of Framework Programs as affiliation network: 'One-mode networks' and 'Two-mode networks'. The aim of this article is to show that the choice of the representation has an impact on the analysis of the networks and on the results of the...

Regarding complex networks, one of the most relevant problems is to understand and to explore community structure. In particular it is important to define the network organization and the functions associated to the different network partitions. In this context, the idea is to consider some new...

Voluntary agreements with industry offer many examples of overcompliance with respect to environmental standards. Such phenomena seem to be irrational but appear less surprising considering firms' strategies are aimed to internalise environmental quality. We model the choice of the environmental...