Advanced Search
MyIDEAS: Login

Regulating unverifiable quality by fixed-price contracts

Contents:

Author Info

  • Cesi Berardino Author-Name : Alberto Iozzi Author-Name : Edilio Valentini

    (THEMA Université de Cergy-Pontoise, Università di Roma "Tor Vergata")

Abstract

We apply the idea of relation contracting to a very simple problem of regulating a single-product monopolistic firm when the regulatory instrument is a fixed-price contract, and quality is endogenous and observable, but not verifiable. We model the interaction between the regulator and the firm as a dynamic game, and we show that, provided both players are sufficiently patient, there exist self-enforcing regula- tory contracts in which the firm prefers to produce the quality man- dated by the regulator, while the regulator chooses to leave the firm a positive rent as a reward to its quality choice. We also show that the socially optimal self-enforcing contract implies a distortion from the second best, which is greater the more impatient is the firm and the larger is the (marginal) effect of the contractual price on the profits the firm would make by deviating from the offered contract. Whenever the punishment profits are strictly positive, even if the firm were infinitely patient, the optimal contract would ensure a Ramsey condition but with positive profits to the firm. Our result also illustrates that, whenever the firm's output has some unverifiable component, optimal regulatory lag in fixed-price contract should be reduced to limit the reward of the firm's opportunistic behaviour.

Download Info

If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the proper application to view it first. In case of further problems read the IDEAS help page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
File URL: http://www.u-cergy.fr/thema/repec/2009-14.pdf
Download Restriction: no

Bibliographic Info

Paper provided by THEMA (THéorie Economique, Modélisation et Applications), Université de Cergy-Pontoise in its series THEMA Working Papers with number 2009-14.

as in new window
Length:
Date of creation: 2009
Date of revision:
Handle: RePEc:ema:worpap:2009-14

Contact details of provider:
Postal: 33, boulevard du port - 95011 Cergy-Pontoise Cedex
Phone: 33 1 34 25 60 63
Fax: 33 1 34 25 62 33
Email:
Web page: http://thema.u-cergy.fr
More information through EDIRC

Related research

Keywords: Quality regulation; relational contracts;

Other versions of this item:

Find related papers by JEL classification:

References

No references listed on IDEAS
You can help add them by filling out this form.

Citations

Lists

This item is not listed on Wikipedia, on a reading list or among the top items on IDEAS.

Statistics

Access and download statistics

Corrections

When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ema:worpap:2009-14

For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Marion Oury).

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 references are entirely missing, you can add them using this form.

If the full references list an item that is present in RePEc, but the system did not link 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 profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.