We develop a dynamic model of strategic investment in a transnational pipeline system. In the absence of international contract enforcement, countries may distort investment in order to increase their bargaining power, resulting in overinvestment in expensive and underinvestment in cheap...

Ende 2005 vereinbarten die deutschen Energieunternehmen E.ON und Wintershall gemeinsam mit der russischen Gazprom eine neue Pipeline "Nord-Stream" zu bauen, mit der russisches Erdgas erstmalig direkt durch die Ostsee nach Deutschland geliefert werden kann. Diese Pipeline erhöht die Sicherheit...

We examine incentives for network-specific investment and consider the implications for network governance. We model a two-sided market in which participants making payments over a network platform can invest in a technology that reduces the marginal cost of using the platform. A network effect...

This paper demonstrates that insiders can erect barriers to entry and skim rents by sinking costs in human capital when labour markets are otherwise perfectly contestable. The sunk costs nature of human capital investments may result from the need to satisfy ever increasing specialised skill...

Syndication, which is a joint realization of one project/one investment by several capital providers, is a long existing phenomenon that plays a central role in many financial market segments. Within this paper we develop a theoretical model focusing on the dynamic aspect of syndication, namely...

In late 2005, the German energy companies E.ON and Wintershall and Russian Gazprom reached an agreement to build a new huge pipeline Nord Stream through the Baltic Sea. This pipeline will provide Russia for the first time ever with the direct access to its Western European customers. This...

Small and medium-sized firms often obtain capital via a mixture of relationship and arm's-length bank lending. We show that such heterogeneous multiple bank financing leads to a lower probability of ineefficient credit foreclosure than both monopoly relationship lending and homogeneous multiple...

The paper studies a generic bilateral trade model with relationship-specific investments. Only the seller invests, and subsequent trade becomes inefficient if his investments are too low. We show that the seller may defect strategically under a fixed-price contract even though he attains any...

Recently, Blanchard and Kremer (BK) argued that disorganization has led to the output decline in the former Soviet Union. In this paper we introduce liquidity and credit constraints into the BK model and show how these problems can alleviate the hold-up problem. We argue further that barter...

In the hold-up problem incomplete contracts cause the proceeds of relation specific investments to be allocated by ex-post bargaining. The present paper investigates the efficiency of incomplete contracts if individuals have heterogeneous preferences implying heterogeneous bargaining behavior...