Hold-up, Asset Ownership, and Reference Points
We study two parties who desire a smooth trading relationship under conditions of value and cost uncertainty. A rigid contract fixing price works well in normal times since there is nothing to argue about. However, when value or cost is exceptional, one party will hold up the other , damaging the relationship and causing deadweight losses as parties withhold cooperation. We show that a judicious allocation of asset ownership can help by reducing the incentives to engage in hold up. In contrast to the literature, the driving force in our model is payoff uncertainty rather than noncontractible investments.
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| Length: | |
| Date of creation: | Oct 2007 |
| Date of revision: | |
| Publication status: | published as Oliver Hart, 2009. "Hold-Up, Asset Ownership, and Reference Points-super-," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, MIT Press, vol. 124(1), pages 267-300, February. |
| Handle: | RePEc:nbr:nberwo:13540 |
| Note: | CF LE |
| Contact details of provider: | Postal: Phone: 617-868-3900 Web page: http://www.nber.org Email: More information through EDIRC
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References listed on IDEAS
Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
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