We study a partnership that anticipates its possible dissolution. In our model, partnerships form in order to take advantage of complementary skills; although new opportunities may arise that make partners’ skills useless. We characterize the optimal, incentive-compatible partnership contract that can be implemented by a simple call option, and then analyze the commonly used buy–sell provision. We show that this dissolution rule gives rise to inefficiency, either in the form of excessive dissolutions combined with underinvestment or efficient dissolutions combined with overinvestment. However, supplementing the buy–sell provision with the right to veto may restore efficiency.
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Paper provided by CESifo Group Munich in its series CESifo Working Paper Series with number
CESifo Working Paper No. 1325.
Find related papers by JEL classification: C78 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Bargaining Theory; Matching Theory D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information J12 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Marriage; Marital Dissolution; Family Structure K12 - Law and Economics - - Basic Areas of Law - - - Contract Law
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References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
Peter Cramton & Robert Gibbons & Paul Klemperer, 1987.
"Dissolving a Partnership Efficiently,"
Papers of Peter Cramton
87econ, University of Maryland, Department of Economics - Peter Cramton, revised 09 Jun 1998.
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Cited by: (explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.)
Stefano Comino & Antonio Nicolò & Piero Tedeschi, 2006.
"Termination Clauses in Partnerships,"
Working Papers
20060505, Università degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca, Dipartimento di Statistica.
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