IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/gamebe/v85y2014icp180-187.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

A matter of interpretation: Ambiguous contracts and liquidated damages

Author

Listed:
  • Grant, Simon
  • Kline, J. Jude
  • Quiggin, John

Abstract

We consider the optimality of liquidated damages contracts in a setting of contractual ambiguity and potential for disputes. We show that when parties are ambiguity averse enough, they will optimally choose liquidated damages contracts and sacrifice risk sharing opportunities.

Suggested Citation

  • Grant, Simon & Kline, J. Jude & Quiggin, John, 2014. "A matter of interpretation: Ambiguous contracts and liquidated damages," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 85(C), pages 180-187.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:gamebe:v:85:y:2014:i:c:p:180-187
    DOI: 10.1016/j.geb.2014.01.019
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0899825614000323
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.geb.2014.01.019?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or search for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Sujoy Mukerji & Jean-Marc Tallon, 2001. "Ambiguity Aversion and Incompleteness of Financial Markets," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 68(4), pages 883-904.
    2. Yeon-Koo Che & Tai-Yeong Chung, 1999. "Contract Damages and Cooperative Investments," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 30(1), pages 84-105, Spring.
    3. Kim-Sau Chung & Oliver Board, 2007. "Object-Based Unawareness," Working Papers 2007-2, University of Minnesota, Department of Economics, revised 24 Aug 2007.
    4. Tai-Yeong Chung, 1991. "Incomplete Contracts, Specific Investments, and Risk Sharing," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 58(5), pages 1031-1042.
    5. Grant, Simon & Kline, J. Jude & Quiggin, John, 2012. "Differential awareness, ambiguity, and incomplete contracts: A model of contractual disputes," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 82(2), pages 494-504.
    6. Grant, Simon & Kline, J. Jude & Quiggin, John, 2014. "A matter of interpretation: Ambiguous contracts and liquidated damages," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 85(C), pages 180-187.
    7. Steven Shavell, 1980. "Damage Measures for Breach of Contract," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 11(2), pages 466-490, Autumn.
    8. Oliver Board, 2008. "Object-Based Unawareness: Theory and Applications," Working Paper 378, Department of Economics, University of Pittsburgh, revised Mar 2009.
    9. Mukerji, Sujoy, 1998. "Ambiguity Aversion and Incompleteness of Contractual Form," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 88(5), pages 1207-1231, December.
    10. Faruk Gul & Wolfgang Pesendorfer, 2014. "Expected Uncertain Utility Theory," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 82(1), pages 1-39, January.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Grant, Simon & Kline, J. Jude & Quiggin, John, 2012. "Differential awareness, ambiguity, and incomplete contracts: A model of contractual disputes," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 82(2), pages 494-504.
    2. Grant, Simon & Kline, Jeff & Quiggin, John, 2011. "Ambiguous contracts: a syntactic approach," Risk and Sustainable Management Group Working Papers 153052, University of Queensland, School of Economics.
    3. Grant, Simon & Kline, J. Jude & Quiggin, John, 2014. "A matter of interpretation: Ambiguous contracts and liquidated damages," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 85(C), pages 180-187.
    4. John Quiggin, 2023. "Seven types of ambiguity," Discussion Papers Series 662, School of Economics, University of Queensland, Australia.
    5. Chen Li, 2017. "Are the poor worse at dealing with ambiguity?," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 54(3), pages 239-268, June.
    6. Matt Essen & John Wooders, 2020. "Dissolving a partnership securely," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 69(2), pages 415-434, March.
    7. Grant, Simon & Jude Kline, J. & Quiggin, John, 2018. "Contracting under uncertainty: A principal–agent model with ambiguity averse parties," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 109(C), pages 582-597.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Grant, Simon & Kline, J. Jude & Quiggin, John, 2012. "Differential awareness, ambiguity, and incomplete contracts: A model of contractual disputes," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 82(2), pages 494-504.
    2. Grant, Simon & Kline, Jeff & Quiggin, John, 2011. "Ambiguous contracts: a syntactic approach," Risk and Sustainable Management Group Working Papers 153052, University of Queensland, School of Economics.
    3. Grant, Simon & Jude Kline, J. & Quiggin, John, 2018. "Contracting under uncertainty: A principal–agent model with ambiguity averse parties," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 109(C), pages 582-597.
    4. Grant, Simon & Kline, Jeff & Quiggin, John, 2009. "A Matter of Interpretation: Bargaining over Ambiguous Contracts," Risk and Sustainable Management Group Working Papers 151190, University of Queensland, School of Economics.
    5. Göller, Daniel & Stremitzer, Alexander, 2014. "Breach remedies inducing hybrid investments," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 37(C), pages 26-38.
    6. Mehrdad Vahabi, 1999. "From Walrasian General Equilibrium to Incomplete Contracts: Making Sense of Institutions," Post-Print halshs-03704424, HAL.
    7. Alexander Stremitzer, 2012. "Standard Breach Remedies, Quality Thresholds, and Cooperative Investments," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 28(2), pages 337-359.
    8. Alessandro De Chiara, 2018. "Courts' Decisions, Cooperative Investments, and Incomplete Contracts," CEU Working Papers 2018_5, Department of Economics, Central European University.
    9. Göller, Daniel & Stremitzer, Alexander, 2009. "Breach Remedies Including Hybrid Investments," Discussion Paper Series of SFB/TR 15 Governance and the Efficiency of Economic Systems 282, Free University of Berlin, Humboldt University of Berlin, University of Bonn, University of Mannheim, University of Munich.
    10. Xinyu Hua, 2007. "Strategic ex ante contracts: rent extraction and opportunity costs," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 38(3), pages 786-803, September.
    11. Feinberg, Yossi, 2012. "Games with Unawareness," Research Papers 2122, Stanford University, Graduate School of Business.
    12. Fujikawa, Takemi, 2009. "The hot stove effect in repeated-play decision making under ambiguity," MPRA Paper 17647, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    13. Bebchuk, Lucian Arye & Png, I. P. L., 1999. "Damage measures for inadvertant breach of contract," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 19(3), pages 319-331, September.
    14. Burkhard Schipper, 2013. "Awareness-dependent subjective expected utility," International Journal of Game Theory, Springer;Game Theory Society, vol. 42(3), pages 725-753, August.
    15. Matthew J. Baker & Joyce P. Jacobsen, 2007. "A Human Capital-Based Theory of Postmarital Residence Rules," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 23(1), pages 208-241, April.
    16. Bester, Helmut & Krähmer, Daniel, 2012. "Exit options in incomplete contracts with asymmetric information," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 147(5), pages 1947-1968.
    17. Oliver Hart & John Moore, 2004. "Agreeing Now to Agree Later: Contracts that Rule Out but do not Rule In," Edinburgh School of Economics Discussion Paper Series 109, Edinburgh School of Economics, University of Edinburgh.
    18. Susanne Ohlendorf, 2009. "Expectation Damages, Divisible Contracts, and Bilateral Investment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 99(4), pages 1608-1618, September.
    19. Burkhard Schipper, 2010. "Revealed Unawareness," Working Papers 303, University of California, Davis, Department of Economics.
    20. Daniel Göller, 2014. "Expectation Damages and Bilateral Cooperative Investments," American Law and Economics Review, American Law and Economics Association, vol. 16(2), pages 473-498.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Ambiguity; Bounded rationality; Expected uncertain utility; Incomplete contracts; Liquidated damages;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D80 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - General
    • D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:gamebe:v:85:y:2014:i:c:p:180-187. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/inca/622836 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.