Consulting firms (CFs) sell services on a project basis to many clients and must therefore continuously tender for new contracts. One frequently used strategy by CFs is to visit the clients in connection to the tenders. The reason to the visits is either: 1) to influence the client in his...

Judicial enforcement of contracts can have an effect on credit market performance because it influences the risk and costs of credit transactions. This paper documents this point by empirically investigating the relation between the efficiency of judicial systems and credit market development...

Edwards and Ogilvie (2008) dispute the empirical basis for the view (Greif, e.g., 1989, 1994, 2006) that multilateral reputation mechanism mitigated agency problems among the eleventh-century Maghribi traders. They assert that the relations among merchants and agents were law-based. This paper...

In this paper I present a theory of the boundary of the firm that accounts for some important characteristics of real-world multidivisional firms: Operative decisions are in the hands of middle managers who are rewarded with incentive contracts based on the performance of their units; Managers'...

Many partnership contracts (and other joint-venture agreements) include so-called 'Texas Shootout Clauses' to govern future breakups. In a Texas Shootout, one partner names a single buy-sell price and the other partner has the option to buy or sell at that price. While the prior literature has...

This paper examines mobile termination fees and their regulation when networks are asymmetric in size. It is demonstrated that with consumer ignorance about the exact termination rates (a) a mobile network's termination rate is the higher the smaller the network's size (as measured through its...

In diesem Beitrag soll ein Überblick über den Handel von Kreditrisiken gegeben werden. Dazu werden die wichtigsten Instrumente vorgestellt ebenso wie die Entwicklung der zugehörigen Märkte. Die Vertragsgestaltung wird insbesondere aus dem Blickwinkel untersucht, negative Effekte von...

Can two negotiators fail to agree when both the size of the surplus and the rationality of the negotiators are common knowledge? We show that the answer is affirmative. When the negotiators can make irrevocable commitments at a low but positive cost, the unique symmetric equilibrium entails...

Business groups in emerging markets perform better than unaffiliated firms. One explanation is that business groups substitute some functions of missing institutions, for example, enforcing contracts. We investigate this by setting up a model where firms within the business group are connected...

We show that multi-bank loan pools improve the risk-return profile of banks' loan business. Banks write simple contracts on the proceeds from pooled loan portfolios, taking into account the free-rider problems in joint loan production. Thus, banks benefit greatly from diversifying credit risk...