IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/mpg/wpaper/2007_18.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

An economic analysis of trade-secret protection in buyer-seller relationships

Author

Listed:
  • Stefan Bechtold

    (Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods, Bonn)

  • Felix Hoeffler

    (Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods, Bonn)

Abstract

The economic analysis of trade-secret protection has traditionally focused on the interests of companies to conceal information from competitors in order to gain a competitive advantage through trade-secret law. This has neglected cases in which the interest is not in concealing information from competitors, but from trading partners. We investigate the social efficiency effects of trade-secret protection in such cases. Many results from economic theory state that asymmetric information (and therefore also its legal protection) is socially undesirable since it leads to inefficient trade. At the same time, protecting private information might create incentives for socially desirable investments. We model this trade-off in a simple buyer-seller model and find that, indeed, trade-secret protection has ambiguous welfare effects. However, a simple, informationally undemanding rule, conditioning the applicability of legal protection on a minimum investment by the informed party to conceal the information, helps to apply trade-secret protection only when it increases welfare. This rationalizes important features of current legal practice.

Suggested Citation

  • Stefan Bechtold & Felix Hoeffler, 2007. "An economic analysis of trade-secret protection in buyer-seller relationships," Discussion Paper Series of the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods 2007_18, Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods.
    • Handle: RePEc:mpg:wpaper:2007_18
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.coll.mpg.de/pdf_dat/2007_18online.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Myerson, Roger B. & Satterthwaite, Mark A., 1983. "Efficient mechanisms for bilateral trading," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 29(2), pages 265-281, April.
    2. Grossman, S J & Hart, O D, 1980. "Disclosure Laws and Takeover Bids," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 35(2), pages 323-334, May.
    3. George A. Akerlof, 1970. "The Market for "Lemons": Quality Uncertainty and the Market Mechanism," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 84(3), pages 488-500.
    4. David D. Friedman & William M. Landes & Richard A. Posner, 1991. "Some Economics of Trade Secret Law," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 5(1), pages 61-72, Winter.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Boerner, Lars, 2016. "Medieval market making brokerage regulations in Central Western Europe, ca. 1250-1700," Economic History Working Papers 66834, London School of Economics and Political Science, Department of Economic History.
    2. Glode, Vincent & Opp, Christian C. & Zhang, Xingtan, 2018. "Voluntary disclosure in bilateral transactions," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 175(C), pages 652-688.
    3. Patrick W. Schmitz, 2006. "Book Review," Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics (JITE), Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, vol. 162(3), pages 535-542, September.
    4. Forges, Francoise & Minelli, Enrico & Vohra, Rajiv, 2002. "Incentives and the core of an exchange economy: a survey," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 38(1-2), pages 1-41, September.
    5. W. Bentley MacLeod, 2006. "Reputations, Relationships and the Enforcement of Incomplete Contracts," CESifo Working Paper Series 1730, CESifo.
    6. Barney Hartman‐Glaser & Benjamin Hébert, 2020. "The Insurance Is the Lemon: Failing to Index Contracts," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 75(1), pages 463-506, February.
    7. Hong, Xianpei & Zhou, Menghuan & Gong, Yeming, 2021. "Dilemma of quality information disclosure in technology licensing," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 294(2), pages 543-557.
    8. Olivier Compte & Philippe Jehiel, 2009. "Veto Constraint in Mechanism Design: Inefficiency with Correlated Types," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 1(1), pages 182-206, February.
    9. Schmitz, Patrick W., 2006. "Book Review of “Contract Theory” (Bolton and Dewatripont, 2005)," MPRA Paper 6977, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    10. Robert E. Hall, 2014. "Trade with Asymmetric Information," Central Banking, Analysis, and Economic Policies Book Series, in: Sofía Bauducco & Lawrence Christiano & Claudio Raddatz (ed.),Macroeconomic and Financial Stability: challenges for Monetary Policy, edition 1, volume 19, chapter 5, pages 151-160, Central Bank of Chile.
    11. Fieseler, Karsten & Kittsteiner, Thomas & Moldovanu, Benny, 2003. "Partnerships, lemons, and efficient trade," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 113(2), pages 223-234, December.
    12. Athreya, Kartik B., 2014. "Big Ideas in Macroeconomics: A Nontechnical View," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262019736, December.
    13. Schmitz, Patrick W. & Sliwka, Dirk, 1998. "Die Bedeutung von privater Information für Vertragsbeziehungen zwischen Käufern und Verkäufern," MPRA Paper 6941, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    14. repec:eee:labchp:v:3:y:1999:i:pb:p:2373-2437 is not listed on IDEAS
    15. Ornelas, Emanuel & Turner, John L., 2007. "Efficient dissolution of partnerships and the structure of control," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 60(1), pages 187-199, July.
    16. Kwon, Illoong & Jun, Daesung, 2015. "Information disclosure and peer effects in the use of antibiotics," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 42(C), pages 1-16.
    17. Robert J. Weber, 1985. "Negotiation and Arbitration: A Game-Theoretic Perspective," Discussion Papers 666, Northwestern University, Center for Mathematical Studies in Economics and Management Science.
    18. Vincent Glode & Christian Opp, 2016. "Asymmetric Information and Intermediation Chains," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 106(9), pages 2699-2721, September.
    19. Schmitz, Patrick W., 2010. "Contractual solutions to hold-up problems with quality uncertainty and unobservable investments," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 46(5), pages 807-816, September.
    20. Fernando ESTRADA, 2010. "Theory Of Argumentation In Financial Markets," Journal of Advanced Studies in Finance, ASERS Publishing, vol. 1(1), pages 18-22.
    21. Riccardo Ferretti & Francesca Pancotto & Enrico Rubaltelli, 2016. "A test of the Behavioral versus the Rational model of Persuasion in Financial Advertising," Centro Studi di Banca e Finanza (CEFIN) (Center for Studies in Banking and Finance) 0059, Universita di Modena e Reggio Emilia, Dipartimento di Economia "Marco Biagi".

    More about this item

    Keywords

    disclosure of information; hold-up problems; trade secrets;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • K2 - Law and Economics - - Regulation and Business Law
    • D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design

    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:mpg:wpaper:2007_18. 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: Marc Martin (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/mppggde.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.