We study how informal buyer-supplier relationships in the German automotive industry affect procurement. Using unique data from a survey focusing on these, we show that more trust, the belief that the trading partner acts to maintain the mutual relationship, is associated with both higher...

To decarbonize the power sector, policy-makers need to commit to long-term credible rules for climate and energy policy. Otherwise, risk of opportunistic policy-making will impair investments into low-carbon technologies. However, the future benefits and costs of decarbonization are subject to...

We examine whether performance-sensitive debt (PSD) is used to reduce hold-up problems in long-term lending relationships. We find that the use of PSD is more common in the presence of a long-term lending relationship and if the borrower has fewer financing alternatives available. In syndicated...

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...

In a hold-up experiment designed to test theoretical predictions following from Hart (1995) and deMeza/Lockwood (1998) regarding investment behavior Sonnemans et al. (2001) (SOS) find only a partial confirmation of theory. According to SOS these deviations from standard theory can be explained...

Change Management beeinflusst die Wohlfahrt von Mitarbeitern, Managern und Organisationseinheiten auf unterschiedliche Weise. Selbst wenn organisatorischer Wandel langfristig einen positiven Wohlfahrtseffekt hat, können Widerstände entstehen, die sich als einseitige Rationalfallen...

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...

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...

We show that performance-sensitive debt (PSD) is used to reduce hold-up problems in repeated lending relationships. Using a large sample of bank loans, we find a more frequent use of PSD if hold-up is more likely, e.g. if a longterm lending relationship exists and the borrower has fewer outside...

It is widely believed that rent-sharing reduces the incentives for investment when long term contracts are infeasible because some of the returns to sunk capital are captured by workers. We propose a simple test for the degree of hold-up based on the fraction of capital costs that are deducted...