This paper uses a principal/agent framework to analyze consumer bankruptcy. The bankruptcy discharge partly insures risk averse borrowers against bad income realizations, but also reduces the borrower's incentive to avoid insolvency. Among our results are: (a) High bankruptcy exemptions increase...

Section 365 of the Bankruptcy Code prohibits enforcement of the once common "ipso facto" clause." The clause excuses the solvent party from performance of the contract when the other party becomes insolvent. We show that the ability of insolvent firms to continue bad projects is enhanced by the...

In most of the contract theory literature, contracting costs are assumed either to be high enough to preclude certain forms of contracting, or low enough to permit any contract to be written. Similarly, researchers usually treat renegotiation as either costless or prohibitively costly. This...

This paper explores how the opportunity to recontract affects investment and trade in contractual relationships when it is assumed that renegotiation is costly. In this world, recontracting retains much of the benefit that has been ascribed to it, including the realization of any surplus that is...

The "lost-volume" problem in contract law poses a problem of contract design. A seller with market power who faces buyers with private valuations for the subject of sale solves the problem with a combination of a required positive down payment and a later transaction price above cost. This...

We study the effect of legal constraints in an environment in which agents face demand shocks they would like to smooth but also have weakness of will: agents' long and short run preferences are misaligned. Some agents are sophisticated--they know they will make inconsistent intertemporal...