Foundations of Incomplete Contracts

Foundations of Incomplete Contracts
Author: Oliver D. Hart
Publisher:
Total Pages: 64
Release: 1998
Genre: Contracts
ISBN:

In the last few years a new area has emerged in economic theory, which goes under the heading of However, almost since its inception, the theory has been under attack for its lack of rigorous foundations. In this paper, we evaluate some of the criticisms that have been made of the theory, in particular, those in Maskin and Tirole (1998a). In doing so, we develop a model that provides a rigorous foundation for the idea that contracts are incomplete.

Incomplete Contracts, Self-Investments, Asymmetric Information, Breach of Contract and the Legal Remedies

Incomplete Contracts, Self-Investments, Asymmetric Information, Breach of Contract and the Legal Remedies
Author: Sugata Bag
Publisher:
Total Pages: 42
Release: 2008
Genre:
ISBN:

In the early models of incomplete contract neither party used to invest in the subject matter of the contract; those models primarily kept their focus on analyzing the effect of legal rules on parties' incentives to trade or to breach. The modern models stretched beyond that to include value enhancing investments into its purview and establish an important result: (legal) penalties often are necessary to induce efficient investment; otherwise 'hold-up' (underinvestment) a general phenomenon when contracts are incomplete. But most of these models' findings are limited to typically symmetric or complete information scenario. In reality, the contracting parties usually possess some non-contractible private information either on their reliance or on their out side trading options or both (since either it is costly to describe or non-verifiable) and there may be ex-ante uncertainty associated with their valuations. So far asymmetric information has played a very limited role in the analysis of hold up problem. Therefore, in light of new and asymmetric information that the parties expected to realize subsequent to a binding contract, a systematic analysis has been attempted to see - first, how the legal remedies can solve hold up problem when parties also bear ex ante private information; secondly, how the courts of law can play a greater role than that has been realized. Focus remains on the ex-ante design of the contract, which would serve as an implicit substitute to complete contracts. Under asymmetric participation to contract, one of our main results shows that although the expectation damage remedy maximizes the social surplus for the parties across different dimensions of asymmetry (uncertainty) but induces excessive reliance. It is also found that party designed liquidated damage remedy is superior to all other court imposed remedies when one-sided asymmetry is concern. Finally we show that when dual asymmetry (uncertainty) is present in a contracting situation a high damage measure (even higher that expectation damage) induces efficient reliance by the parties. These results bear serious implications for various contract doctrines and debates.

More is Less

More is Less
Author: Maija Halonen-Akatwijuka
Publisher:
Total Pages:
Release: 2013
Genre: Economics
ISBN:

Why are contracts incomplete? Transaction costs and bounded rationality cannot be a total explanation since states of the world are often describable, foreseeable, and yet are not mentioned in a contract. Asymmetric information theories also have limitations. We offer an explanation based on "contracts as reference points". Including a contingency of the form, "The buyer will require a good in event E", has a benefit and a cost. The benefit is that if E occurs there is less to argue about; the cost is that the additional reference point provided by the outcome in E can hinder (re)negotiation in states outside E. We show that if parties agree about a reasonable division of surplus, an incomplete contract can be strictly superior to a contingent contract.

Simple Contracts, Renegotiation Under Asymmetric Information, and the Hold-Up Problem

Simple Contracts, Renegotiation Under Asymmetric Information, and the Hold-Up Problem
Author: Patrick W. Schmitz
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2004
Genre:
ISBN:

In this article it is demonstrated that voluntary bargaining over a collective decision under asymmetric information may well lead to ex post efficiency if the default decision is non-trivial. It is argued that the default decision may be interpreted as a simple contract that the parties have written ex ante. This result is used in order to show that simple unconditional contracts which are renegotiated may allow the hold-up problem to be solved, even if the parties' valuations are private information.

The Role of Dynamic Renegotiation and Asymmetric Information in Financial Contracting

The Role of Dynamic Renegotiation and Asymmetric Information in Financial Contracting
Author: Michael Ryan Roberts
Publisher:
Total Pages: 43
Release: 2014
Genre: Bank loans
ISBN:

Using data from SEC filings, I show that the typical bank loan is renegotiated five times, or every nine months. The pricing, maturity, amount, and covenants are all significantly modified during each renegotiation, whose timing is governed by the financial health of the contracting parties and uncertainty regarding the borrowers' credit quality. The relative importance of these factors depends on the duration of the lending relationship. I interpret these results in light of financial contracting theories and emphasize that renegotiation is an important mechanism for dynamically completing contracts and for allocating control rights ex post.