How far do the contractual implications of hold-up-based theories (Klein, Crawford, and Alchian (1978), Williamson (1979, 1985)) extend? I investigate this in the context of trucking. Quasi-rents in trucking are generally smaller than in the contexts studied in the previous empirical literature....

Since 1951 the Japanese ministry of transport has been vested with sweeping authority to restrict entry and set prices in commercial trucking. Perhaps it could have used this authority to cartelize the industry. The weight of evidence holds that it did not do so. There is little to suggest that...