The Renegotiation-Proofness Principle and Costly Renegotiation
Abstract
We study contracting and costly renegotiation in settings of complete but unverifiable information, using the mechanism-design approach. We show how renegotiation activity is best modelled in the fundamentals of the mechanism-design framework, so that noncontractibility of renegotiation amounts to a constraint on the problem. We formalize and clarify the Renegotiation-Proofness Principle (RPP), which states that any state-contingent payoff vector that is implementable in an environment with renegotiation can also be implemented by a mechanism in which renegotiation does not occur in equilibrium. We observe that the RPP is not generally valid. However, we prove a general monotonicity result that confirms the RPP's "renegotiation is bad" message. Our monotonicity theorem establishes that the set of implementable state-contingent payoffs increases with the costs of renegotiation.Download Info
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Paper provided by Department of Economics, UC San Diego in its series University of California at San Diego, Economics Working Paper Series with number qt4242n025.Length:
Date of creation: 01 May 2002
Date of revision:
Handle: RePEc:cdl:ucsdec:qt4242n025
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Keywords: renegotiation; contracts;References
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Citations
Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.Cited by:
- Bull, Jesse & Watson, Joel, 2000.
"Evidence Disclosure and Verifiability,"
University of California at San Diego, Economics Working Paper Series
qt6th0060j, Department of Economics, UC San Diego.
- Bull, Jesse & Watson, Joel, 2004. "Evidence disclosure and verifiability," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 118(1), pages 1-31, September.
- Bull, Jesse & Watson, Joel, 2002. "Evidence Disclosure and Verfiability," University of California at San Diego, Economics Working Paper Series qt19p7z2gm, Department of Economics, UC San Diego.
- Evelyn Korn & Stephan Meisenzahl, 2009. "Contracting still matters! Or: How to design a letter of intent," MAGKS Papers on Economics 200909, Philipps-Universität Marburg, Faculty of Business Administration and Economics, Department of Economics (Volkswirtschaftliche Abteilung).
- Watson, Joel, 2006. "Contract and Mechanism Design in Settings with Multi-Period Trade," University of California at San Diego, Economics Working Paper Series qt63s1s3j6, Department of Economics, UC San Diego.
- Watson, Joel, 2006. "Contract and Game Theory: Basic Concepts for Settings with Finite Horizons," University of California at San Diego, Economics Working Paper Series qt0wx67671, Department of Economics, UC San Diego.
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