IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ags/iaae09/50046.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Mitigating Contractual Hazards: Short-term vs. Long-term Contracting in Animal Agriculture

Author

Listed:
  • Dubois, Pierre
  • Vukina, Tomislav

Abstract

The production contracts between integrator firms (principals) and independent growers (agents) in most agricultural settings are governed by short term contracts. Recently, some firms converted their short-term into long-term contracts. This change in contract duration represents a natural experiment that enables us to isolate the effect of the change in contract length from other changes in contract parameters on agents' incentives to perform. Using contract settlement data for the production of hatching eggs we show that switching from a short-term to a long-term contract alleviated the hold-up problem and resulted in increased investments in productivity enhancing technologies and practices which improved performance across all productivity margins.

Suggested Citation

  • Dubois, Pierre & Vukina, Tomislav, 2009. "Mitigating Contractual Hazards: Short-term vs. Long-term Contracting in Animal Agriculture," 2009 Conference, August 16-22, 2009, Beijing, China 50046, International Association of Agricultural Economists.
    • Handle: RePEc:ags:iaae09:50046
    DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.50046
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/50046/files/IAAE_44_Vukina.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.22004/ag.econ.50046?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
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Hart, Oliver & Moore, John, 1990. "Property Rights and the Nature of the Firm," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 98(6), pages 1119-1158, December.
    2. Grossman, Sanford J & Hart, Oliver D, 1986. "The Costs and Benefits of Ownership: A Theory of Vertical and Lateral Integration," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 94(4), pages 691-719, August.
    3. Michael D. Whinston, 2003. "On the Transaction Cost Determinants of Vertical Integration," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 19(1), pages 1-23, April.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Patrick W. Schmitz, 2006. "Information Gathering, Transaction Costs, and the Property Rights Approach," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 96(1), pages 422-434, March.
    2. Hideshi Itoh, 2006. "The Theories of International Outsourcing and Integration : A Theoretical Overview from the Perspective of Organizational Economics," Microeconomics Working Papers 21891, East Asian Bureau of Economic Research.
    3. Xavier Fageda & Germa Bel, 2008. "Local privatization, intermunicipal cooperation,transaction costs and political interests: Evidence from Spain," IREA Working Papers 200804, University of Barcelona, Research Institute of Applied Economics, revised Apr 2008.
    4. Robert Gibbons & John Roberts, 2012. "The Handbook of Organizational Economics," Economics Books, Princeton University Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 9889.
    5. Dietrich, Diemo & Jindra, Björn, 2010. "Corporate governance in the multinational enterprise: A financial contracting perspective," International Business Review, Elsevier, vol. 19(5), pages 446-456, October.
    6. Thiele, Veikko, 2007. "The Demand for Tailored Goods and the Theory of the Firm," MPRA Paper 2471, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    7. Christian A. Ruzzier, 2009. "Asset Specificity and Vertical Integration: Williamson’s Hypothesis Reconsidered," Harvard Business School Working Papers 09-119, Harvard Business School.
    8. Timothy Bresnahan & Jonathan Levin, 2012. "Vertical Integration and Market Structure [The Handbook of Organizational Economics]," Introductory Chapters,, Princeton University Press.
    9. Tobias Brändle & Andreas Koch, 2017. "Offshoring and Outsourcing Potentials: Evidence from German Micro-Level Data," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 40(9), pages 1775-1806, September.
    10. Paul Walker, 2013. "The ‘Reference Point’ Approach To The Theory Of The Firm: An Introduction," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 27(4), pages 670-695, September.
    11. Rehn, Eric, 2007. "Public Hospitals - Incentives and Organization," Working Papers 2007:13, Lund University, Department of Economics, revised 01 Apr 2008.
    12. Jean‐Etienne De Bettignies, 2006. "Product market competition and boundaries of the firm," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 39(3), pages 948-970, August.
    13. Eppinger, Peter S. & Kukharskyy, Bohdan, 2017. "Contracting institutions and firm boundaries," University of Tübingen Working Papers in Business and Economics 100, University of Tuebingen, Faculty of Economics and Social Sciences, School of Business and Economics.
    14. Ahern, Kenneth R., 2012. "Bargaining power and industry dependence in mergers," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 103(3), pages 530-550.
    15. Antrà s, Pol & Yeaple, Stephen R., 2014. "Multinational Firms and the Structure of International Trade," Handbook of International Economics, in: Gopinath, G. & Helpman, . & Rogoff, K. (ed.), Handbook of International Economics, edition 1, volume 4, chapter 0, pages 55-130, Elsevier.
    16. Müller, Daniel & Schmitz, Patrick W., 2016. "Transaction costs and the property rights approach to the theory of the firm," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 87(C), pages 92-107.
    17. Pol Antràs, 2014. "Grossman–Hart (1986) Goes Global: Incomplete Contracts, Property Rights, and the International Organization of Production," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 30(suppl_1), pages 118-175.
    18. Hodaka Morita & Maroš Servátka, 2018. "Investment in Outside Options as Opportunistic Behavior: An Experimental Investigation," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 85(2), pages 457-484, October.
    19. Jisun Yu & Seung-Hyun Lee & Kunsoo Han, 2015. "FDI motives, market governance, and ownership choice of MNEs: A study of Malaysia and Thailand from an incomplete contracting perspective," Asia Pacific Journal of Management, Springer, vol. 32(2), pages 335-362, June.
    20. Kohler, Wilhelm & Smolka, Marcel, 2021. "Productivity and firm boundaries," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 135(C).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Agribusiness;

    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:ags:iaae09:50046. 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: AgEcon Search (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/iaaeeea.html .

    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.