IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ehl/lserod/115069.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Empirical approaches to trust and relational contracts

Author

Listed:
  • Macchiavello, Rocco
  • Morjaria, Ameet

Abstract

Broadly speaking, economists have studied trust in two somewhat distinct ways. One approach is best captured by notions of generalized trust; another approach places trust at the core of relational contracts. After reviewing two empirical approaches to the study of relational contracts, we provide a preliminary attempt to bridge these two strands of the literature in the context of Rwanda’s coffee supply chain.

Suggested Citation

  • Macchiavello, Rocco & Morjaria, Ameet, 2022. "Empirical approaches to trust and relational contracts," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 115069, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
  • Handle: RePEc:ehl:lserod:115069
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/115069/
    File Function: Open access version.
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. John McMillan & Christopher Woodruff, 1999. "Interfirm Relationships and Informal Credit in Vietnam," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 114(4), pages 1285-1320.
    2. James M. Malcomson, 2016. "Relational Incentive Contracts With Persistent Private Information," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 84, pages 317-346, January.
    3. Stephen Knack & Philip Keefer, 1997. "Does Social Capital Have an Economic Payoff? A Cross-Country Investigation," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 112(4), pages 1251-1288.
    4. W. Bentley MacLeod, 2007. "Reputations, Relationships, and Contract Enforcement," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 45(3), pages 595-628, September.
    5. Rocco Macchiavello & Ameet Morjaria, 2015. "The Value of Relationships: Evidence from a Supply Shock to Kenyan Rose Exports," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 105(9), pages 2911-2945, September.
    6. Arthur Blouin & Rocco Macchiavello, 2019. "Strategic Default in the International Coffee Market," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 134(2), pages 895-951.
    7. Tarek Ghani & Tristan Reed, 2022. "Relationships on the Rocks: Contract Evolution in a Market for Ice," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 14(1), pages 330-365, February.
    8. Rocco Macchiavello & Ameet Morjaria, 2021. "Competition and Relational Contracts in the Rwanda Coffee Chain," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 136(2), pages 1089-1143.
    9. Luigi Guiso & Paola Sapienza & Luigi Zingales, 2004. "The Role of Social Capital in Financial Development," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 94(3), pages 526-556, June.
    10. Luigi Guiso & Paola Sapienza & Luigi Zingales, 2009. "Cultural Biases in Economic Exchange?," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 124(3), pages 1095-1131.
    11. James Richardson, 1993. "Parallel sourcing and supplier performance in the Japanese automobile industry," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 14(5), pages 339-350, July.
    12. Abhijit V. Banerjee & Esther Duflo, 2000. "Reputation Effects and the Limits of Contracting: A Study of the Indian Software Industry," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 115(3), pages 989-1017.
    13. James M. Malcomson, 2012. "Relational Incentive Contracts [The Handbook of Organizational Economics]," Introductory Chapters,, Princeton University Press.
    14. Giacomo Calzolari & Leonardo Felli & Johannes Koenen & Giancarlo Spagnolo & Konrad O. Stahl, 2021. "Relational Contracts and Trust in a High-Tech Industry," CRC TR 224 Discussion Paper Series crctr224_2021_316, University of Bonn and University of Mannheim, Germany.
    15. Daniel Barron & Robert Gibbons & Ricard Gil & Kevin J.Murphy, 2020. "Relational Adaptation Under Reel Authority," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 66(5), pages 1868-1889, May.
    16. Francine Lafontaine & Margaret Slade, 2007. "Vertical Integration and Firm Boundaries: The Evidence," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 45(3), pages 629-685, September.
    17. Susan Helper & Rebecca Henderson, 2014. "Management Practices, Relational Contracts, and the Decline of General Motors," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 28(1), pages 49-72, Winter.
    18. Makarin, Alexey & Guiso, Luigi, 2020. "Affinity, Trust, and Information," CEPR Discussion Papers 15250, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    19. Malcomson, James M., 2015. "Relational incentive contracts with productivity shocks," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 92(C), pages 122-137.
    20. Ricard Gil & Giorgio Zanarone, 2016. "New Frontiers in Empirical Research on Informal Contracting," Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics (JITE), Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, vol. 172(2), pages 390-407, June.
    21. Rocco Macchiavello, 2022. "Relational Contracts and Development," Annual Review of Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 14(1), pages 337-362, August.
    22. George Baker & Robert Gibbons & Kevin J. Murphy, 2002. "Relational Contracts and the Theory of the Firm," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 117(1), pages 39-84.
    23. Mailath, George J. & Samuelson, Larry, 2006. "Repeated Games and Reputations: Long-Run Relationships," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780195300796.
    24. Gereffi, Gary, 1999. "International trade and industrial upgrading in the apparel commodity chain," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 48(1), pages 37-70, June.
    25. Masten, Scott E, 1984. "The Organization of Production: Evidence from the Aerospace Industry," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 27(2), pages 403-417, October.
    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. Keefer, Philip & Vlaicu, Razvan, 2022. "Employee Trust and Performance Constraints in Public Sector Organizations," IDB Publications (Working Papers) 12572, Inter-American Development Bank.
    2. Vrolijk, Kasper, 2023. "How does globalisation affect social cohesion?," IDOS Discussion Papers 5/2023, German Institute of Development and Sustainability (IDOS).

    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. Cajal-Grossi, Julia & Del Prete, Davide & Macchiavello, Rocco, 2023. "Supply chain disruptions and sourcing strategies," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 90(C).
    2. Bohdan Kukharskyy & Michael Pflüger, 2011. "Relational Contracts and the Economic Well-Being of Nations," Working Papers 095, Bavarian Graduate Program in Economics (BGPE).
    3. Christopher Hansman & Jonas Hjort & Gianmarco León-Ciliotta & Matthieu Teachout, 2020. "Vertical Integration, Supplier Behavior, and Quality Upgrading among Exporters," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 128(9), pages 3570-3625.
    4. Fischer, Christian, 2020. "Optimal payment contracts in trade relationships," MPRA Paper 101956, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    5. Mohamed Abouaziza, 2022. "Farmer constraints and relational contracts: evidence from agricultural value chains in East Africa," Economics PhD Theses 0122, Department of Economics, University of Sussex Business School.
    6. Bergman, Mats A. & Johansson, Per & Lundberg, Sofia & Spagnolo, Giancarlo, 2016. "Privatization and quality: Evidence from elderly care in Sweden," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 49(C), pages 109-119.
    7. W. Bentley MacLeod & James M. Malcomson, 2023. "Implicit Contracts, Incentive Compatibility, and Involuntary Unemployment: Thirty Years On," Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics (JITE), Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, vol. 179(3-4), pages 470-499.
    8. Laura Boudreau & Julia Cajal-Grossi & Rocco Macchiavello, 2023. "Global Value Chains in Developing Countries: A Relational Perspective from Coffee and Garments," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 37(3), pages 59-86, Summer.
    9. Rocco Macchiavello & Ameet Morjaria, 2021. "Competition and Relational Contracts in the Rwanda Coffee Chain," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 136(2), pages 1089-1143.
    10. Ricard Gil & Giorgio Zanarone, 2018. "On the determinants and consequences of informal contracting," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 27(4), pages 726-741, October.
    11. Anjana Susarla & Martin Holzhacker & Ranjani Krishnan, 2020. "Calculative Trust and Interfirm Contracts," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 66(11), pages 5465-5484, November.
    12. Cajal-Grossi, Julia & Macchiavello, Rocco & Noguera, Guillermo, 2019. "International buyers' sourcing and suppliers' markups in Bangladeshi garments," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 102612, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    13. Genesove, David & Hoffmann, Eran & Elster, Yael, 2020. "Agreements Must Be Kept? Residential Leases during Covid-19," CEPR Discussion Papers 15102, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    14. Macchiavello, Rocco & Miquel-Florensa, Josepa, 2017. "Vertical Integration and Relational Contracts: Evidence from the Costa Rica Coffee Chain," CEPR Discussion Papers 11874, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    15. Kukharskyy, Bohdan & Pflüger, Michael P., 2018. "Time Is on My Side: Relational Contracts and Aggregate Welfare," IZA Discussion Papers 11387, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    16. Bohdan Kukharskyy, 2012. "Quality of Institutions, Global Sourcing, and the Make-or-Buy Decision," Working Papers 128, Bavarian Graduate Program in Economics (BGPE).
    17. Ricard Gil & Myongjin Kim & Giorgio Zanarone, 2022. "Relationships Under Stress: Relational Outsourcing in the U.S. Airline Industry After the 2008 Financial Crisis," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 68(2), pages 1256-1277, February.
    18. Lippert, Steffen & Spagnolo, Giancarlo, 2011. "Networks of relations and Word-of-Mouth Communication," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 72(1), pages 202-217, May.
    19. Giacomo Calzolari & Leonardo Felli & Johannes Koenen & Giancarlo Spagnolo & Konrad O. Stahl, 2021. "Relational Contracts and Trust in a High-Tech Industry," CRC TR 224 Discussion Paper Series crctr224_2021_316, University of Bonn and University of Mannheim, Germany.
    20. Lang, Matthias, 2019. "Communicating subjective evaluations," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 179(C), pages 163-199.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    relational contracts; trust; ERC Consolidator Grant Sharing Gains; IGC; EDI; GPRL at Northwestern; Elsevier deal;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J1 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics
    • R14 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - General Regional Economics - - - Land Use Patterns
    • J01 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - General - - - Labor Economics: General

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:ehl:lserod:115069. 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: LSERO Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/lsepsuk.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.