IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/ecolet/v99y2008i1p119-122.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Incomplete contracts, the hold-up problem, and asymmetric information

Author

Listed:
  • Schmitz, Patrick W.

Abstract

Given symmetric information, in a standard hold-up problem a buyer's investment incentives are always increasing in his bargaining power. While this result is robust under one-sided private information, it can be overturned under two-sided private information.

Suggested Citation

  • Schmitz, Patrick W., 2008. "Incomplete contracts, the hold-up problem, and asymmetric information," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 99(1), pages 119-122, April.
  • Handle: RePEc:eee:ecolet:v:99:y:2008:i:1:p:119-122
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0165-1765(07)00224-8
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or search for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Rubinstein, Ariel & Wolinsky, Asher, 1992. "Renegotiation-Proof Implementation and Time Preferences," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 82(3), pages 600-614, June.
    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. Williamson, Oliver, 2009. "The Theory of the Firm as Governance Structure: From Choice to Contract," Economic Policy, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration, vol. 6, pages 111-134, December.
    4. Muthoo,Abhinay, 1999. "Bargaining Theory with Applications," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521576475, October.
    5. Eric Maskin & John Moore, 1999. "Implementation and Renegotiation," Review of Economic Studies, Oxford University Press, vol. 66(1), pages 39-56.
    6. William P. Rogerson, 1992. "Contractual Solutions to the Hold-Up Problem," Review of Economic Studies, Oxford University Press, vol. 59(4), pages 777-793.
    7. Oliver Hart & John Moore, 1999. "Foundations of Incomplete Contracts," Review of Economic Studies, Oxford University Press, vol. 66(1), pages 115-138.
    8. Georg Noeldeke & Klaus Schmidt, 1998. "Sequential Investments and Options to Own," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 29(4), pages 633-653, Winter.
    9. Oliver Hart & John Moore, 2007. "Incomplete Contracts and Ownership: Some New thoughts," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 97(2), pages 182-186, May.
    10. Schmitz, Patrick W., 2002. "On the Interplay of Hidden Action and Hidden Information in Simple Bilateral Trading Problems," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 103(2), pages 444-460, April.
    11. Eric Maskin & Jean Tirole, 1999. "Unforeseen Contingencies and Incomplete Contracts," Review of Economic Studies, Oxford University Press, vol. 66(1), pages 83-114.
    12. Oliver Hart & Andrei Shleifer & Robert W. Vishny, 1997. "The Proper Scope of Government: Theory and an Application to Prisons," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 112(4), pages 1127-1161.
    13. Ching-To Albert Ma, 1994. "Renegotiation and Optimality in Agency Contracts," Review of Economic Studies, Oxford University Press, vol. 61(1), pages 109-129.
    14. Patrick W. Schmitz, 2006. "Information Gathering, Transaction Costs, and the Property Rights Approach," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 96(1), pages 422-434, March.
    15. 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.
    16. Jean Tirole, 1999. "Incomplete Contracts: Where Do We Stand?," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 67(4), pages 741-782, July.
    17. 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.
    18. 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.
    19. De Fraja, Gianni, 1999. "After You Sir. Hold-Up, Direct Externalities, and Sequential Investment," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 26(1), pages 22-39, January.
    20. Hart, Oliver D. & Shleifer, Andrei & Vishny, R. W., 1997. "The Proper Scope of Government: Theory and an Application to Prisons," Scholarly Articles 30727607, Harvard University Department of Economics.
    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. Kurtis Swope & Ryan Wielgus & Pamela Schmitt & John Cadigan, 2011. "Contracts, Behavior, and the Land-assembly Problem: An Experimental Study," Research in Experimental Economics, in: Experiments on Energy, the Environment, and Sustainability, pages 151-180, Emerald Group Publishing Limited.
    2. Schmitz, Patrick W., 2021. "On the optimality of outsourcing when vertical integration can mitigate information asymmetries," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 202(C).
    3. Schmitz, Patrick W., 2012. "Public goods and the hold-up problem under asymmetric information," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 117(3), pages 642-645.
    4. Patrick W Schmitz, 2022. "How (Not) to Purchase Novel Goods and Services: Specific Performance Versus at-will Contracts," The Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 132(647), pages 2563-2577.
    5. Andrea Fosfuri & Christian Helmers & Catherine Roux, 2017. "Shared Ownership of Intangible Property Rights: The Case of Patent Coassignments," The Journal of Legal Studies, University of Chicago Press, vol. 46(2), pages 339-369.
    6. 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.
    7. 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.
    8. Benjamin E. Hermalin & Michael L. Katz, 2009. "Information and the hold‐up problem," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 40(3), pages 405-423, September.
    9. Schmitz, Patrick W., 2012. "The hold-up problem, innovations, and limited liability," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 117(3), pages 841-843.
    10. Du, Wenjing & Fang, Guanfu & Gao, Tiantian & Jiang, Wei, 2023. "Public credit institutions, export activities, and global value chain participation: Evidence from China's credit demonstration city construction program," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 126(C).
    11. Mori, Yusuke, 2020. "Ex ante investment, ex post adaptation, and joint ownership," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 187(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. Stephanie Rosenkranz & Patrick W. Schmitz, 2007. "Can Coasean Bargaining Justify Pigouvian Taxation?," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 74(296), pages 573-585, November.
    2. 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.
    3. 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.
    4. Patrick W. Schmitz, 2006. "Information Gathering, Transaction Costs, and the Property Rights Approach," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 96(1), pages 422-434, March.
    5. Schmitz, Patrick W., 2023. "The proper scope of government reconsidered: Asymmetric information and incentive contracts," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 157(C).
    6. Patrick W. Schmitz, 2005. "Should Contractual Clauses that Forbid Renegotiation Always be Enforced?," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 21(2), pages 315-329, October.
    7. Schmitz, Patrick W., 2012. "The hold-up problem, innovations, and limited liability," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 117(3), pages 841-843.
    8. Schmitz, Patrick W., 2013. "Incomplete contracts and optimal ownership of public goods," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 118(1), pages 94-96.
    9. Robert Gibbons & John Roberts, 2012. "The Handbook of Organizational Economics," Economics Books, Princeton University Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 9889.
    10. Schmitz, Patrick W., 2008. "Joint ownership and the hold-up problem under asymmetric information," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 99(3), pages 577-580, June.
    11. Ilya Segal & Michael D.Whinston, 2012. "Property Rights [The Handbook of Organizational Economics]," Introductory Chapters,, Princeton University Press.
    12. 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.
    13. Schmitz, Patrick W., 2008. "Information gathering and the hold-up problem in a complete contracting framework," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 101(3), pages 268-271, December.
    14. Patrick W. Schmitz, 2001. "Partial Privatization and Incomplete Contracts: The Proper Scope of Government Reconsidered," FinanzArchiv: Public Finance Analysis, Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, vol. 57(4), pages 394-411, August.
    15. Schmitz, Patrick W., 2017. "Incomplete contracts, shared ownership, and investment incentives," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 144(C), pages 153-165.
    16. Schmitz, Patrick W., 2002. "On the Interplay of Hidden Action and Hidden Information in Simple Bilateral Trading Problems," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 103(2), pages 444-460, April.
    17. Alan Schwartz, 2004. "The Law and Economics of Costly Contracting," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 20(1), pages 2-31, April.
    18. Rosenkranz, Stephanie & Schmitz, Patrick W., 2003. "Optimal allocation of ownership rights in dynamic R&D alliances," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 43(1), pages 153-173, April.
    19. Schmitz, Patrick W., 2014. "Optimal ownership of public goods reconsidered," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 125(1), pages 21-24.
    20. Schmitz, Patrick W., 2021. "Optimal ownership of public goods under asymmetric information," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 198(C).

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design
    • D86 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Economics of Contract Law

    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:eee:ecolet:v:99:y:2008:i:1:p:119-122. 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: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/ecolet .

    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.