We investigate the effects of contract renegotiation in multi-agent situations where risk-averse agents negotiate a contract offer to the principal after the agents observe a common, unverifiable perfect signal about their actions. We show that renegotiation with multiple agents reduces the cost...

Can formal contracts help resolving the holdup problem? We address this important question by studying the holdup problem in repeated transactions between a seller and a buyer in which the seller can make relation-specific investments in each period. In contrast to previous findings, we...

The purpose of this essay is to provide an overview of the theories of the vertical firm boundaries from a viewpoint of a theorist whose field of specialization is organizational economics. I offer several testable theoretical hypotheses (with a few relevant empirical studies in the fields...

We attempt to formulate and explain two types of self-fulfilling prophecy, called the Pygmalion effect (if a supervisor thinks her subordinates will succeed, they are more likely to succeed) and the Galatea effect (if a person thinks he will succeed, he is more likely to succeed). To this...