This paper is concerned with the coexistence of company-owned units and franchised units in business format franchising and their different contractual arrangements. Drawing insights from case studies that indicate both the development and the maintenance of company-wide brand names and...

This paper is concerned with the coexistence of company-owned units and franchised units in business format franchising and their different contractual arrangements. Drawing insights from case studies that indicate both the development and the maintenance of company-wide brand names and...

Two major issues in custom systems development are how to resolve moral hazard and how to motivate relation-specific investment. Sophisticated contractual terms are one solution, but not practical. We analyze a solution proposed by several legal practitioners -- the use of installment payments....

Although China's state-owned enterprises have beenproven inefficient, China has been slow to move its state-owned ventures towardprivatization.Considering this slow process, this research examines howstate-owned enterprises are impacted during the organizational changesassociated with...

This paper studies the role of agency in the self-enforcement of interfirm contracts. When interfirm transactions are carried out by the agents rather than the owners, the agents' incentive to breach a contract for the benefit of their firm is typically lower than that of the owners if doing so...

During transition, maintaining employment and providing a social safety net to the unemployed are important to social stability, which in turn is crucial for the productivity of the whole economy. Because independent institutions for social safety are lacking and firms with strong profit...

This article provides a theory of interfirm partial ownership. We consider a setting in which an upstream firm can make two alternative types of investment: either specific investment that only a particular downstream firm can use or general investment that any downstream firm is capable of...