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Should Contractual Clauses that Forbid Renegotiation Always be Enforced?

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Schmitz, Patrick W.

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Abstract

Recent work in the field of mechanism design has led some researchers to propose institutional changes that would permit parties to enter into non-modifiable contracts, which is not possible under current contract law. This paper demonstrates that it may well be socially desirable not to enforce contractual terms that explicitly prevent renegotiation, even if rational and symmetrically informed parties have deliberately signed such a contract. The impossibility to prevent renegotiation can constrain the principal's abilities to introduce distortions in order to reduce the agent's rent, so that the first-best benchmark solution will more often be attained.

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Paper provided by C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers in its series CEPR Discussion Papers with number 5292.

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Date of creation: Oct 2005
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Handle: RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:5292

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Related research
Keywords: contract modification; moral hazard; renegotiation;

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Find related papers by JEL classification:
K12 - Law and Economics - - Basic Areas of Law - - - Contract Law

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References listed on IDEAS
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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.)

  1. 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). [Downloadable!]
  2. Schmitz, Patrick W., 2001. "The Hold-Up Problem and Incomplete Contracts: A Survey of Recent Topics in Contract Theory," MPRA Paper 12562, University Library of Munich, Germany. [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
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