We consider the problem of a principal who wishes to contract with a privately informed agent and is not able to commit to not renegotiating any mechanism. That is, we allow the principal, after observing the outcome of a mechanism to renegotiate the resulting contract without cost by proposing...

We consider rules (strategies, commitments, contracts, or computer programs) that make behavior contingent on an opponent's rule. The set of perfectly observable rules is not well defined. Previous contributions avoid this problem by restricting the rules deemed admissible. We instead limit the...

It is well known that delegating the play of a game to an agent via incentive contracts may serve as a commitment device and hence provide a strategic advantage. Previous literature has shown that any Nash equilibrium outcome of an extensive-form principals-only game can be supported as a...

We consider the problem of a principal who wishes to contract with a privately informed agent and is not able to commit to not renegotiating any mechanism. That is, we allow the principal, after observing the outcome of a mechanism to renegotiate the resulting contract without cost by proposing...

Hart & Moore (1999) construct a model to show that contracts perform poorly when the state of the world is unverifiable and renegotiation cannot be ruled out. They implicitly assume that one player can extort payment from another by threatening to take an inefficient action which hurts both of...

We propose a unified framework to study relational contracting and hold-up problems in infinite horizon stochastic games. We first illustrate that with respect to long run decisions, the common formulation of relational contracts as Pareto-optimal public perfect equilibria is in stark contrast...

Neither marriage nor a legally enforceable contract serves any useful purpose if the parties have access to a perfect credit market. In the presence of credit rationing, efficiency and utility equalization are guaranteed only by a legally enforceable contract. Separate-property marriage may...

Do contracts provide reference points that affect ex post behavior? We address this question in a canonical buyer-seller relationship with renegotiation. Our paper provides causal experimental evidence that an initial contract has a highly significant and economically important impact on...

I study a repeated principal-agent game with long‐term output contracts that can be renegotiated at will. Actions are observable but not contractible, so they can only be incentivized through implicit agreements formed in equilibrium. I show that contract renegotiation is a powerful tool for...