A buyer and a seller can exchange one unit of an indivisible good. While producing the good, the seller can exert unobservable effort (hidden action). Then the buyer realizes whether his valuation is high or low, which stochastically depends upon the seller's effort level (hidden information)....

An inventor can invest research effort to come up with an innovation. Once an innovation is made, a contract is negotiated and unobservable effort must be exerted to develop a product. In the absence of liability constraints, the inventor’s investment incentives are increasing in his...

An agent can make an observable but non-contractible investment. A principal then offers to collaborate with the agent to provide a public good. Private information of the agent about his valuation may either decrease or increase his investment incentives, depending on whether he learns his type...

The government and a non-governmental organization (NGO) can invest in the provision of a public good. Besley and Ghatak (2001) have argued that in an incomplete contracting framework, the party who values the public good most should be the owner. We show that this conclusion relies on their...

In the property rights approach to the theory of the firm (Hart, 1995), parties bargain about whether or not to collaborate after non-contractible investments have been made. Most contributions apply the regular Nash bargaining solution. We explore the implications of using the generalized Nash...

We reconsider the property rights approach to the theory of the firm based on incomplete contracts. We explore the implications of different degrees of relationship-specificity when there are two parties, A and B, who can make investments in physical capital (instead of human capital). If...

A government agency wants an infrastructure-based public service to be provided. Our experimental study compares two different modes of provision. In a public–private partnership, the two tasks of building the infrastructure and operating it are delegated to one private contractor (a...

This paper reports data from a laboratory experiment on two-period moral hazard problems. The findings corroborate the contract-theoretic insight that even though the periods are technologically unrelated, due to incentive considerations principals can benefit from offering long-term contracts...

Principal--agent models in which the agent has access to private information before a contract is signed are a cornerstone of contract theory. We have conducted an experiment with 720 participants to explore whether the theoretical insights are reflected by the behaviour of subjects in the...

Review of: Contract Theory. By Patrick Bolton, Mathias Dewatripont. 2005. MIT Press: Cambridge and London