IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ces/ceswps/_1714.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Construction Contracts (or “How to Get the Right Building at the Right Price?”)

Author

Listed:
  • Surajeet Chakravarty
  • W. Bentley MacLeod

Abstract

Most contracts that individuals enter into are not written from scratch; rather, they depend upon forms and terms that have been successful in the past. In this paper, we study the structure of form construction contracts published by the American Institute of Architects (AIA). We show that these contracts are an efficient solution to the problem of procuring large, complex projects when unforeseen contingencies are inevitable. This is achieved by carefully structuring the ex post bargaining game between the Principal and the Agent. The optimal mechanism corresponding to the AIA construction form is consistent with decisions of the courts in several prominent but controversial cases, and hence it provides an economic foundation for a number of the common-law excuses from performance. Finally, the case of form contracts for construction is an example of how markets, as opposed to private negotiations, can be used to determine efficient contract terms.

Suggested Citation

  • Surajeet Chakravarty & W. Bentley MacLeod, 2006. "Construction Contracts (or “How to Get the Right Building at the Right Price?”)," CESifo Working Paper Series 1714, CESifo.
    • Handle: RePEc:ces:ceswps:_1714
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cesifo.org/DocDL/cesifo1_wp1714.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Hart, Oliver D & Moore, John, 1988. "Incomplete Contracts and Renegotiation," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 56(4), pages 755-785, July.
    2. Bajari, Patrick & Tadelis, Steven, 2001. "Incentives versus Transaction Costs: A Theory of Procurement Contracts," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 32(3), pages 387-407, Autumn.
    3. Kathryn E. Spier, 1992. "The Dynamics of Pretrial Negotiation," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 59(1), pages 93-108.
    4. 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.
    5. Daron Acemoglu & Simon Johnson & James A. Robinson, 2001. "The Colonial Origins of Comparative Development: An Empirical Investigation," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 91(5), pages 1369-1401, December.
    6. William P. Rogerson, 1984. "Efficient Reliance and Damage Measures for Breach of Contract," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 15(1), pages 39-53, Spring.
    7. Luca Anderlini & Leonardo Felli, 1994. "Incomplete Written Contracts: Undescribable States of Nature," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 109(4), pages 1085-1124.
    8. Dani Rodrik & Arvind Subramanian & Francesco Trebbi, 2004. "Institutions Rule: The Primacy of Institutions Over Geography and Integration in Economic Development," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 9(2), pages 131-165, June.
    9. Steven Shavell, 1984. "The Design of Contracts and Remedies for Breach," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 99(1), pages 121-148.
    10. Bebchuk, Lucian Ayre & Shavell, Steven, 1991. "Information and the Scope of Liability for Breach of Contract: The Rule of Hadley vs. Baxendale," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 7(2), pages 284-312, Fall.
    11. William P. Rogerson, 1992. "Contractual Solutions to the Hold-Up Problem," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 59(4), pages 777-793.
    12. Laffont, Jean-Jacques & Tirole, Jean, 1986. "Using Cost Observation to Regulate Firms," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 94(3), pages 614-641, June.
    13. Philippe Aghion & Jean Tirole, 1994. "The Management of Innovation," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 109(4), pages 1185-1209.
    14. 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.
    15. Tirole, Jean, 1986. "Procurement and Renegotiation," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 94(2), pages 235-259, April.
    16. R. Preston McAfee & John McMillan, 1986. "Bidding for Contracts: A Principal-Agent Analysis," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 17(3), pages 326-338, Autumn.
    17. Aghion, Philippe & Dewatripont, Mathias & Rey, Patrick, 1994. "Renegotiation Design with Unverifiable Information," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 62(2), pages 257-282, March.
    18. 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.
    19. Pierpaolo Battigalli & Giovanni Maggi, 2002. "Rigidity, Discretion, and the Costs of Writing Contracts," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 92(4), pages 798-817, September.
    20. Myerson, Roger B. & Satterthwaite, Mark A., 1983. "Efficient mechanisms for bilateral trading," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 29(2), pages 265-281, April.
    21. Milgrom, Paul & Roberts, John, 1990. "The Economics of Modern Manufacturing: Technology, Strategy, and Organization," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 80(3), pages 511-528, June.
    22. Hart, Oliver, 1995. "Firms, Contracts, and Financial Structure," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780198288817.
    23. Nöldeke, Georg & Schmidt, Klaus M., 1995. "Option contracts and renegotiation," Munich Reprints in Economics 19329, University of Munich, Department of Economics.
    24. MacLeod, W Bentley & Malcomson, James M, 1993. "Investments, Holdup, and the Form of Market Contracts," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 83(4), pages 811-837, September.
    25. McAfee, R Preston & McMillan, John, 1987. "Auctions and Bidding," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 25(2), pages 699-738, June.
    26. Townsend, Robert M., 1979. "Optimal contracts and competitive markets with costly state verification," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 21(2), pages 265-293, October.
    27. Georg Noldeke & Klaus M. Schmidt, 1995. "Option Contracts and Renegotiation: A Solution to the Hold-Up Problem," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 26(2), pages 163-179, Summer.
    28. Edlin, Aaron S & Reichelstein, Stefan, 1996. "Holdups, Standard Breach Remedies, and Optimal Investment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 86(3), pages 478-501, June.
    29. Victor P. Goldberg, 1976. "Regulation and Administered Contracts," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 7(2), pages 426-448, Autumn.
    30. Joel S. Demski & David E.M. Sappington, 1991. "Resolving Double Moral Hazard Problems with Buyout Agreements," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 22(2), pages 232-240, Summer.
    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. Heijdra, Ben J. & Ligthart, Jenny E., 2007. "Fiscal policy, monopolistic competition, and finite lives," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 31(1), pages 325-359, January.
    2. Blume, Andreas & Deimen, Inga & Inoue, Sean, 2022. "Incomplete contracts versus communication," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 205(C).

    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. Surajeet Chakravarty & Bentley MacLeod, 2004. "On the Efficiency of Standard Contracts the Case of Construction," Working Papers 874, Princeton University, Department of Economics, Industrial Relations Section..
    2. Surajeet Chakravarty & W. Bentley MacLeod, 2004. "On the Efficiency of Standard Contracts the Case of Construction," Working Papers 874, Princeton University, Department of Economics, Industrial Relations Section..
    3. Surajeet Chakravarty & W. Bentley MacLeod, 2009. "Contracting in the shadow of the law," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 40(3), pages 533-557, September.
    4. Lewis A. Kornhauser & W. Bentley MacLeod, 2012. "Contracts between Legal Persons [The Handbook of Organizational Economics]," Introductory Chapters,, Princeton University Press.
    5. Schmitz, Patrick W, 2001. "The Hold-up Problem and Incomplete Contracts: A Survey of Recent Topics in Contract Theory," Bulletin of Economic Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 53(1), pages 1-17, January.
    6. Ilya Segal & Michael D.Whinston, 2012. "Property Rights [The Handbook of Organizational Economics]," Introductory Chapters,, Princeton University Press.
    7. Mehrdad Vahabi, 1999. "From Walrasian General Equilibrium to Incomplete Contracts: Making Sense of Institutions," Post-Print halshs-03704424, HAL.
    8. Yeon-Koo Che & Jozsef Sakovics, 2006. "The Hold-up Problem," Edinburgh School of Economics Discussion Paper Series 142, Edinburgh School of Economics, University of Edinburgh.
    9. Robert Gibbons & John Roberts, 2012. "The Handbook of Organizational Economics," Economics Books, Princeton University Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 9889.
    10. Alessandro De Chiara, 2018. "Courts' Decisions, Cooperative Investments, and Incomplete Contracts," CEU Working Papers 2018_5, Department of Economics, Central European University.
    11. repec:eee:labchp:v:3:y:1999:i:pb:p:2291-2372 is not listed on IDEAS
    12. Göller, Daniel & Stremitzer, Alexander, 2014. "Breach remedies inducing hybrid investments," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 37(C), pages 26-38.
    13. Watson, Joel & Wignall, Chris, 2009. "Hold-Up and Durable Trading Opportunities," University of California at San Diego, Economics Working Paper Series qt8p8284wg, Department of Economics, UC San Diego.
    14. Buzard, Kristy & ,, 2012. "Contract, renegotiation, and hold up: Results on the technology of trade and investment," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 7(2), May.
    15. Buzard, Kristy & ,, 2012. "Contract, renegotiation, and hold up: Results on the technology of trade and investment," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 7(2), May.
    16. Donald B. Hausch & Yeon-Koo Che, 1999. "Cooperative Investments and the Value of Contracting," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 89(1), pages 125-147, March.
    17. Schmitz, Patrick W., 2002. "Simple contracts, renegotiation under asymmetric information, and the hold-up problem," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 46(1), pages 169-188, January.
    18. M'hand Fares, 2009. "Specific Performance, Separability Condition and the Hold-Up Problem," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 29(3), pages 2055-2062.
    19. Hoppe, Eva I. & Schmitz, Patrick W., 2011. "Can contracts solve the hold-up problem? Experimental evidence," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 73(1), pages 186-199, September.
    20. W. Bentley MacLeod, 2006. "Reputations, Relationships and the Enforcement of Incomplete Contracts," CESifo Working Paper Series 1730, CESifo.
    21. 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.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D8 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty
    • K2 - Law and Economics - - Regulation and Business Law
    • L7 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Primary Products and Construction

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:ces:ceswps:_1714. 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: Klaus Wohlrabe (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cesifde.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.