IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/fth/harver/1846.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Foundations of Incomplete Contracts

Author

Listed:
  • Oliver Hart
  • John Moore

Abstract

In the last few years, a new area has emerged in economic theory, which goes under the heading of "incomplete contracting." However, almost since its inception, the theory has been under attack for its lack of rigorous foundations. In this paper, we evaluate some of the criticisms that have been made of the theory, in particular, those in Maskin and Tirole (1998a). In doing so, we develop a model that provides a rigorous foundation for the idea that contracts are incomplete.

Suggested Citation

  • Oliver Hart & John Moore, 1998. "Foundations of Incomplete Contracts," Harvard Institute of Economic Research Working Papers 1846, Harvard - Institute of Economic Research.
  • Handle: RePEc:fth:harver:1846
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Hart, Oliver & Moore, John, 1990. "Property Rights and the Nature of the Firm," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 98(6), pages 1119-1158, December.
    2. Imre Bárány, 1992. "Fair Distribution Protocols or How the Players Replace Fortune," Mathematics of Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 17(2), pages 327-340, May.
    3. Eric Maskin & John Moore, 1999. "Implementation and Renegotiation," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 66(1), pages 39-56.
    4. Grossman, Sanford J & Hart, Oliver D, 1986. "The Costs and Benefits of Ownership: A Theory of Vertical and Lateral Integration," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 94(4), pages 691-719, August.
    5. Eric Maskin & Jean Tirole, 1999. "Unforeseen Contingencies and Incomplete Contracts," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 66(1), pages 83-114.
    6. Eric Maskin & Jean Tirole, 1999. "Two Remarks on the Property-Rights Literature," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 66(1), pages 139-149.
    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. Sandeep Baliga & Tomas Sjöström, 2009. "Contracting with Third Parties," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 1(1), pages 75-100, February.
    2. Pei, Di, 2010. "Incomplete Contracts: Foundations and Applications," MPRA Paper 23650, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 10 Jun 2010.
    3. Aghion, Philippe & Dewatripont, Mathias & Rey, Patrick, 2002. "On partial contracting," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 46(4-5), pages 745-753, May.
    4. Xiaokai Yang, 2000. "Incomplete Contingent Labor Contract, Asymmetric Residual Rights and Authority, and the Theory of the Firm," CID Working Papers 45, Center for International Development at Harvard University.
    5. Lars Kumkar, 2003. "Regulatory Choices and Commitment: Challenges for Electricity Market Regulation in Kosovo," Post-Communist Economies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 15(1), pages 91-115.
    6. Robert Gibbons & John Roberts, 2012. "The Handbook of Organizational Economics," Economics Books, Princeton University Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 9889.
    7. Philippe Aghion & Drew Fudenberg & Richard Holden & Takashi Kunimoto & Olivier Tercieux, 2012. "Subgame-Perfect Implementation Under Information Perturbations," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 127(4), pages 1843-1881.
    8. 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.
    9. Berde, Éva, 2013. "A fundamentális transzformáció és a referenciapont szerepe a hiányos szerződések elméletében [The role of basic transformation and reference point in the theory of incomplete contracts]," Közgazdasági Szemle (Economic Review - monthly of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences), Közgazdasági Szemle Alapítvány (Economic Review Foundation), vol. 0(7), pages 865-885.
    10. Andreas Roider, 2006. "Delegation of Authority as an Optimal (In)Complete Contract," Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics (JITE), Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, vol. 162(3), pages 391-411, September.
    11. Hennessy, David A., 2003. "Property rights, productivity, and the nature of noncontractible actions in a franchise system," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 52(4), pages 443-468, December.
    12. Lewis A. Kornhauser & W. Bentley MacLeod, 2012. "Contracts between Legal Persons [The Handbook of Organizational Economics]," Introductory Chapters,, Princeton University Press.
    13. Rey, Patrick & Tirole, Jean, 2001. "Alignement of Interests and the Governance of Joint Ventures," IDEI Working Papers 441, Institut d'Économie Industrielle (IDEI), Toulouse.
    14. Mathias Erlei & Wiebke Roß, 2013. "Bounded Rationality as an Essential Component of the Holdup Problem," TUC Working Papers in Economics 0009, Abteilung für Volkswirtschaftslehre, Technische Universität Clausthal (Department of Economics, Technical University Clausthal).
    15. Andreas Roider, 2004. "Asset Ownership and Contractibility of Interaction," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 35(4), pages 787-802, Winter.
    16. 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.
    17. Makoto Hanazono, 2004. "Holdup with Subsidized Investment," Econometric Society 2004 Far Eastern Meetings 640, Econometric Society.
    18. Ilya Segal & Michael D.Whinston, 2012. "Property Rights [The Handbook of Organizational Economics]," Introductory Chapters,, Princeton University Press.
    19. Schmitz, Patrick W. & Sliwka, Dirk, 2001. "On synergies and vertical integration," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 19(8), pages 1281-1295, September.
    20. Liang Guo, 2021. "Partial Unraveling and Strategic Contract Timing," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 67(12), pages 7719-7736, December.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D23 - Microeconomics - - Production and Organizations - - - Organizational Behavior; Transaction Costs; Property Rights

    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:fth:harver:1846. 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 Krichel (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ieharus.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.