Property rights provide incentives to create information but also incentives to hoard it before award of protection. Even after award, others who might supplement that idea lack bargaining power until they too secure property rights. An unintended consequence is to slow, not hasten, progress...

The central task in developing a plausible normative theory of contract law is to specify the appropriate role of the state in regulating incomplete or relational contracts. Complete contracts (to the extent that they exist in the real world) are rarely, if ever, breached since by definition the...

In diesem Beitrag diskutieren wir den in der Literatur heftig umstrittenen Aspekt, ob Vertrauen (Institutionen) nur ein Komplement zu formellen Institutionen (Vertrauen) sein oder diese(s) möglicherweise sogar substituieren kann (können). Wir fassen Vertrauen als spezifische, kooperative...

Dieser Beitrag behandelt Begriff, Ursachen, Wirkungen sowie Bewertung und mögliche Ausgleichsmaßnahmen gestörter Vertragsparität. Dabei wird auf die ökonomische Verhandlungstheorie und die Theorie der Wettbewerbsmärkte zurückgegriffen. Es werden in der Rechtswissenschaft vorfindbare...

Mutually beneficial agreements might fail if the parties fear contractual opportunism. Litigation is supposed to be a remedy, but gives scope for another kind of opportunistic behavior which we call litigational opportunism: Even knowing that the opponent has fulfilled his obligations, a party...

In this paper we analyze whether trust can overcome the contractual hazards caused by the territoriality of law, how effective trust is and what the impact is on the sequential structure of trade. The paper contributes to the New Institutional Economics of International Transactions (NIEIT).

The German law on employees' inventions requires employees to report to their employer any invention made in relation with the work contract. An employer claiming the right to the invention is obliged to pay a compensation to the employee. Up to now, this compensation is a matter of...

Dieser Beitrag analysiert die geplante und zum Teil schon verwirklichte Reform des Gesetzes über Arbeitnehmererfindungen (ArbEG). Im Mittelpunkt der Analyse stehen die Vergütungen, die Arbeitgeber an einen Mitarbeiter zu zahlen haben, wenn sie dessen Erfindung in Anspruch nehmen. Bisher wurde...

We analyze the legal reform concerning employees? inventions in Germany. Using a simple principal-agent model, we derive a unique efficient payment scheme: a bonus which is contingent on the project value. We demonstrate that the old German law creates inefficient incentives. However, the new...

The aim of this paper is threefold: we first discuss the appropriateness of the traditional trust-game-tree for the analysis of trust relationships. Following the definition put forward by Lee et al. (2005) that confident expectations and a willingness to be vulnerable are critical components of...