The thesis of this paper is that human capital is inalienable: it cannot be bought or sold. Control of physical capital proved the means by which one agent influences another. That is, the pattern of property rights over physical assets is important in the determination of incentives. Recent...

We are concerned with the design of a constitution for a firm - an ex ante contract which assigns residual rights of control (and possibly residual income rights) without reference to the issue to be decided. We focus attention on two polar constitutions: non-profit cooperatives and outside...

The paper compares co-operative governance structure to outside ownership. The distinction between the two lies in who has residual rights of control. It is found that a co-operative becomes relatively less efficient as the environment becomes more competitive, and the interests of members...

This paper is a theoretical study into how credit constraints intereact with aggregate economic activity over the business cycle. We construct a model of a dynamic economy in which lenders cannot force borrowers to repay their debts unless the debts are secured. In such an economy, durable...

We argue that long-term debt has a role in controlling management's ability to finance future investments. A company with high (widely-held) debt will find it hard to raise capital, since new security holders will have low priority relative to existing creditors. Conversely for a company with...

We view a contract as a list of outcomes. Ex ante, the parties commit not to consider outcomes not on the list, i.e., these are ruled out'. Ex post, they freely bargain over outcomes on the list, i.e., the contract specifies no mechanism to structure their choice; in this sense outcomes on the...