A common pattern of control in firms is for management to retain a broad set of rights, while the remaining stakeholders’ contracts provide them with targeted veto rights over specific classes of decisions. We explain this pattern of control sharing as an efficient organizational response that...

Neoclassical economic theory seems to aptly characterize contract law’s essence. Contracts enable two parties to reach a mutually beneficial agreement, thereby facilitating economically efficient transactions. It would seem to follow that the achievement of economic efficiency serves as...

This article examines some of the principles and assumptions from classical contract theory that underlie many of the rules of contract law. It then explores the process by which written contracts are created and entered into. Comparing the realities of the process involved in creating written...

Do you ask for contract or purchase terms prior to completing your everyday purchases? Do you first read the pizza box before paying the pizza delivery guy or gal? Typical consumers do not ask for or read their contracts prepurchase, and companies have become accustomed to burying purchase terms...

This paper studies the effect bargaining power has on self-enforcing contracts. Optimal contracts are characterized under three enforcement regimes. When enforcement is absent, I show that as the agent's bargaining power increases, her incentive payments decrease even though her total...

Starting from the Contribution from Ronald Coase, the modern theoretical literature tends to identify the firm with the hierarchic coordination of the workforce, opposed to the coordination of the production factors operated by the market. Other authors prefer to concentrate on the entrepreneur...

The following case study investigates the contract enforcement institutions that enable German customers to purchase software in Asia and Eastern Europe. The case study shows that nation-states are hardly able to generate a legal "shadow" for cross-border business relations. The same holds true...

This comment on a contribution by Giesela Rühl sheds more light on two critical aspects of the market for contract law. For one thing, many practitioners and academics believe that parties often choose the applicable law without regard to its legal content. Correspondingly, it is questioned...

Traditional models of full and open competition are generally applied for ordinary public procurement contracts, whereas special competitive procedures (such as unsolicited proposals) are permissible under various international and domestic frameworks for “Public-Private Partnership” (PPP)...