Partnership Dissolution, Complementarity, and Investment Incentives
Abstract
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.Download Info
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Paper provided by CESifo Group Munich in its series CESifo Working Paper Series with number 1325.Length:
Date of creation: 2004
Date of revision:
Handle: RePEc:ces:ceswps:_1325
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Related research
Keywords:Other versions of this item:
- Jianpei Li & Elmar Wolfstetter, 2010. "Partnership dissolution, complementarity, and investment incentives," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 62(3), pages 529-552, July.
- D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design
- C78 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Bargaining Theory; Matching Theory
- J12 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Marriage; Marital Dissolution; Family Structure
- K12 - Law and Economics - - Basic Areas of Law - - - Contract Law
- L24 - Industrial Organization - - Firm Objectives, Organization, and Behavior - - - Contracting Out; Joint Ventures
This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:
- NEP-ALL-2004-11-22 (All new papers)
- NEP-BEC-2004-11-22 (Business Economics)
- NEP-LAW-2004-11-22 (Law & Economics)
References
References listed on IDEASPlease 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.:
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Open Access publications from Universidad Carlos III de Madrid
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Citations
Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.Cited by:
- Comino, Stefano & Nicolò, Antonio & Tedeschi, Piero, 2010.
"Termination clauses in partnerships,"
European Economic Review,
Elsevier, vol. 54(5), pages 718-732, July.
- Stefano Comino & Antonio Nicolò & Piero Tedeschi, 2006. "Termination Clauses in Partnerships," Working Papers 20060505, Università degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca, Dipartimento di Statistica.
- Stefano Comino & Antonio Nicolò & Piero Tedeschi, 2005. "Termination Clauses in Partnerships," Industrial Organization 0509007, EconWPA.
- Bernhard Ganglmair, 2008. "Breakup of Repeat Transaction Contracts, Specific Investment, and Efficient Rent-Seeking," JEPS Working Papers 08-001, JEPS.
- Li, Jianpei, 2009. "Partnership Dissolution and Proprietary Information," MPRA Paper 12505, University Library of Munich, Germany.
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