Many European policy initiatives continue to promote R&D collaboration in view of its expected benefits. Despite the advantages of R&D cooperation, to benefit from it, firms must create a structure to support the efficient transfer of knowledge-based assets. In fact, the set-up and...

Halal certification of financials product may reduce transaction costs for its buyers when it provides a trusted standard for investors that seek to comply with Islamic law. However, we show that in practice it takes considerable amounts of time (20 days) and money (USD 122,000) to obtain a...

Over the last years, with the sudden and rising appeal of blockchain technology, some scholars have begun to investigate smart contracts, namely blockchain-enforced agreements. According to enthusiastic (and sometimes naïve) views, smart contracts are supposed to allow parties to conduct...

This paper seeks to extend the standard assumption concerning incomplete contracts (New Institutional Economics). It is based on a very specific market transaction, within which parties can not affect the market structure. Instead, referring to transaction as introduced by John R. Commons, we...

A point repeatedly stressed by transaction cost economics is that the more specific the asset, the more likely is vertical integration to be optimal. In spite of the profusion of empirical papers supporting this prediction, recent surveys and casual observation suggest that higher levels of...

Inspired by facts from the private sector construction industry, we develop a model that explains many stylized facts of procurement contracts. The buyer in our model incurs a cost of providing a comprehensive design, and is faced with a trade-off between providing incentives and reducing ex...

Inspired by facts from the private sector construction industry, we develop a model that explains many stylized facts of procurement contracts. The buyer in our model incurs a cost of providing a comprehensive design, and is faced with a trade-off between providing incentives and reducing ex...