Rolling Contracts as an Agency Problem
Rolling Contracts as an Agency Problem
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滚动合同作为代理问题
DOI：
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发表时间：
2004
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影响因子：
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通讯作者：
C. Gillette
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作者：
C. Gillette
滚动合同涉及卖方在交付货物时包含的条款，并声称影响合同当事人的权利。它们在通过电话或在线交易达成的合同中很常见，也有争议，因为买家往往不明确同意它们，甚至不太可能阅读它们。在本文中，我建议将滚动条款的有效性和标准格式合同的有效性作为一个委托代理问题来评估是合适的。当买方在起草合同的过程中不代表自己时，他们的利益仍可能被竞争市场中的卖家、裁决合同起草人选择的条款的法院、或强制或禁止某些合同条款的政府机构内化。我建议，对于不读的买家来说，最好的代理商可能会因条款不同而有所不同。在某些情况下，但不是所有情况下，卖家都有动机加入符合买家利益的条款。在其他情况下，出卖人可以插入看似符合出卖人利益的条款，但只有当买方很可能是在剥削时，出卖人才可以援引这些条款规定的权利。卖家使用条款来避免这种可观察到的、但无法核实的买家不当行为实际上可能服务于大多数买家的利益。然而，卖方将不会有动机考虑买方的利益，而不是其他条款。在这些情况下，法院或中介机构可能是买家更好的代理人。尽管如此，法院和机构也有自己的偏见，因此它们实施的法律规则不一定反映广大买家的利益。因此，适当的分析并不是普遍地批准或谴责滚动合同的做法，而是需要一种微妙的观点，以确定市场机制何时可能内化未阅读的买家的利益，以及法律行为者何时可以更好地履行这一角色。
Rolling contracts involve terms that sellers include with delivery of goods and that purport to affect the rights of the parties to a contract. They have become common in contracts concluded in telephone or on-line transactions, and controversial because buyers often do not explicitly assent to them and are highly unlikely even to read them. In this article, I suggest that it is appropriate to evaluate the effectiveness of rolling terms, and of standard form contracts generally, as a principal-agent problem. When buyers do not represent themselves in the process of drafting a contract, their interests may still be internalized by sellers in competitive markets, by courts that adjudicate the terms that the contract drafter selected, or by government agencies that mandate or prohibit certain contract terms. I suggest that the best agent for nonreading buyers is likely to vary for different clauses. In some, but not all situations, sellers have incentives to include terms that serve buyer interests. In other situations, sellers may insert clauses that appear to serve seller interests, but sellers may invoke their rights under those clauses only when it is likely that buyers are acting exploitatively. Sellers who use clauses to avoid such observable, but nonverifiable acts of buyer misbehavior may actually serve the interests of the majority of buyers. Sellers will not have incentives to consider buyer interests with respect to other clauses, however. In those cases, courts or agencies may be superior surrogates for buyers. Nevertheless, courts and agencies suffer from their own biases, so that the legal rules that they impose will not necessarily reflect the interests of buyers at large. Thus, rather than approve or condemn the practice of rolling contracts generally, the proper analysis requires a nuanced view that identifies when market mechanisms are likely to internalize the interests of nonreading buyers and when legal actors can better fulfill that role.