IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/mhr/jinste/urnsici0932-4569(200703)1631_5otiodb_2.0.tx_2-f.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

On the Importance of Default Breach Remedies

Author

Listed:
  • Randolph Sloof
  • Hessel Oosterbeek
  • Joep Sonnemans

Abstract

Theory predicts that default breach remedies are immaterial whenever contracting costs are negligible. Some experimental studies, however, suggest that in practice default rules do matter, as they may affect parties' preferences over contract terms. This paper presents results from an experiment designed to address the importance of default breach remedies for actual contract outcomes. We find that default rules do have an influence. The reason for this is not that contract proposals and/or responses are biased towards the default, but rather that parties often disagree over what the best contract is and therefore end up with the default.

Suggested Citation

  • Randolph Sloof & Hessel Oosterbeek & Joep Sonnemans, 2007. "On the Importance of Default Breach Remedies," Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics (JITE), Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, vol. 163(1), pages 5-22, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:mhr:jinste:urn:sici:0932-4569(200703)163:1_5:otiodb_2.0.tx_2-f
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mohrsiebeck.com/en/article/on-the-importance-of-default-breach-remedies-101628093245607780181856
    Download Restriction: Fulltext access is included for subscribers to the printed version.
    ---><---

    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. 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.
    2. Ernst Fehr & Susanne Kremhelmer & Klaus M. Schmidt, 2008. "Fairness and the Optimal Allocation of Ownership Rights," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 118(531), pages 1262-1284, August.
    3. Schwab, Stewart, 1988. "A Coasean Experiment on Contract Presumptions," The Journal of Legal Studies, University of Chicago Press, vol. 17(2), pages 237-268, June.
    4. Charles A. Holt & Susan K. Laury, 2002. "Risk Aversion and Incentive Effects," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 92(5), pages 1644-1655, December.
    5. Sloof, Randolph & Leuven, Edwin & Oosterbeek, Hessel & Sonnemans, Joep, 2003. "An Experimental Comparison of Reliance Levels under Alternative Breach Remedies," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 34(2), pages 205-222, Summer.
    6. 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.
    7. Steven Shavell, 1980. "Damage Measures for Breach of Contract," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 11(2), pages 466-490, Autumn.
    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. Isabel Marcin & Andreas Nicklisch, 2014. "Testing the Endowment Effect for Default Rules," Discussion Paper Series of the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods 2014_01, Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods.
    2. Randolph Sloof & C. Mirjam van Praag, 2008. "The Effect of Noise in a Performance Measure on Work Motivation," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 08-074/1, Tinbergen Institute.
    3. Urs Schweizer, 2007. "On the Importance of Default Breach Remedies. Comment," Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics (JITE), Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, vol. 163(1), pages 23-25, March.
    4. Christoph Engel & Urs Schweizer, 2007. "Editorial Preface," Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics (JITE), Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, vol. 163(1), pages 1-4, March.
    5. Marcin Isabel & Nicklisch Andreas, 2017. "Testing the Endowment Effect for Default Rules," Review of Law & Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 13(2), pages 1-27, July.
    6. Marcin, Isabel & Nicklisch, Andreas, 2014. "Testing the Endowment Effect for Default Rules," WiSo-HH Working Paper Series 10, University of Hamburg, Faculty of Business, Economics and Social Sciences, WISO Research Laboratory.

    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. Göller, Daniel & Stremitzer, Alexander, 2014. "Breach remedies inducing hybrid investments," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 37(C), pages 26-38.
    2. Lewis A. Kornhauser & W. Bentley MacLeod, 2012. "Contracts between Legal Persons [The Handbook of Organizational Economics]," Introductory Chapters,, Princeton University Press.
    3. Simon Schropp, Kornel Mahlstein, 2007. "The Optimal Design of Trade Policy Flexibility in the WTO," IHEID Working Papers 27-2007, Economics Section, The Graduate Institute of International Studies, revised Dec 2007.
    4. Susanne Ohlendorf, 2009. "Expectation Damages, Divisible Contracts, and Bilateral Investment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 99(4), pages 1608-1618, September.
    5. Xinyu Hua, 2007. "Strategic ex ante contracts: rent extraction and opportunity costs," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 38(3), pages 786-803, September.
    6. Ronen Avraham & Zhiyong Liu, 2006. "Incomplete Contracts with Asymmetric Information: Exclusive Versus Optional Remedies," American Law and Economics Review, American Law and Economics Association, vol. 8(3), pages 523-561.
    7. Bebchuk, Lucian Arye & Png, I. P. L., 1999. "Damage measures for inadvertant breach of contract," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 19(3), pages 319-331, September.
    8. Alessandro De Chiara, 2018. "Courts' Decisions, Cooperative Investments, and Incomplete Contracts," CEU Working Papers 2018_5, Department of Economics, Central European University.
    9. Wils Wouter P.J., 1993. "Who Should Bear the Costs of Failed Negotiations? A Functional Inquiry into Precontractual Liability," Journal des Economistes et des Etudes Humaines, De Gruyter, vol. 4(1), pages 93-134, March.
    10. Richard R.W. Brooks & Alexander Stremitzer, 2012. "On and Off Contract Remedies Inducing Cooperative Investments," American Law and Economics Review, American Law and Economics Association, vol. 14(2), pages 488-516.
    11. Auerbach, Jan U. & Fonseca, Miguel A., 2020. "Preordered service in contract enforcement," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 122(C), pages 130-149.
    12. Sloof, Randolph & Oosterbeek, Hessel & Riedl, Arno & Sonnemans, Joep, 2006. "Breach remedies, reliance and renegotiation," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 26(3), pages 263-296, September.
    13. Tadashi Ito, 2007. "NAFTA and productivity convergence between Mexico and the US," IHEID Working Papers 26-2007, Economics Section, The Graduate Institute of International Studies, revised 27 Nov 2007.
    14. Miceli, Thomas J., 1995. "Contract modification when litigating for damages is costly," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 15(1), pages 87-99, January.
    15. David Martimort & Aggey Semenov & Lars Stole, 2017. "A Theory of Contracts with Limited Enforcement," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 84(2), pages 816-852.
    16. Daniel Göller, 2014. "Expectation Damages and Bilateral Cooperative Investments," American Law and Economics Review, American Law and Economics Association, vol. 16(2), pages 473-498.
    17. Mehrdad Vahabi, 1999. "From Walrasian General Equilibrium to Incomplete Contracts: Making Sense of Institutions," Post-Print halshs-03704424, HAL.
    18. Brooks, Richard & Stremitzer, Alexander, 2009. "On and Off Contract Remedies," Discussion Paper Series of SFB/TR 15 Governance and the Efficiency of Economic Systems 290, Free University of Berlin, Humboldt University of Berlin, University of Bonn, University of Mannheim, University of Munich.
    19. Friedrich L. Sell & Marcus Wiens, 2006. "Vertrauen: Substitut oder Komplement zu formellen Institutionen?," Schmollers Jahrbuch : Journal of Applied Social Science Studies / Zeitschrift für Wirtschafts- und Sozialwissenschaften, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin, vol. 126(4), pages 605-633.
    20. 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:

    • K12 - Law and Economics - - Basic Areas of Law - - - Contract Law
    • C91 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Laboratory, Individual Behavior

    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:mhr:jinste:urn:sici:0932-4569(200703)163:1_5:otiodb_2.0.tx_2-f. 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: Thomas Wolpert (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mohrsiebeck.com/jite .

    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.