The Evolution of Investment Conventions

项目描述为“讨价还价公约的演变”由赫伯特·达维德和W。本特利麦克劳德 法律的学者和经济史学家早就认识到社会惯例和规范对于经济高效平稳运行的重要性。例如，如果一个员工觉得他或她的雇主是公平的，那么冲突就会减少，个人会更多地投入到这种关系中。然而，准确界定公平公约的概念是极其困难的。 一种方法是研究契约在一个明确的讨价还价问题中的演变，在这个问题中，个人必须决定如何分配从贸易中获得的收益。目前的文献表明，50/50的分裂是一个稳定的约定，在各种情况下。然而，这条规则并没有奖励那些对关系贡献更大的个人，格罗斯曼和哈特认为这一点可以解释为什么所有权的结构使一方成为公司利润的剩余索取者。什么还没有被研究，也是当前项目的对象，是在关系特定投资的存在下讨价还价惯例的演变。 我们发现，除了关系特定的投资可以导致社会习俗是非常不同的50/50分裂。此外，这项研究还解决了亨利·汉斯曼和雷尼尔·克拉克曼提出的一个重要的悬而未决的问题，即为什么所有权集中在一个人或一个团体手中是有效的。我们表明，根据信息结构，所有权和谈判惯例都演变成一个“公平的规则”，这使得有效的关系特定投资和低水平的冲突。特别是，我们证明，这取决于关键的互补性之间的具体投资的个人，这种公平和有效的公约是否制定。 这项工作是理论性的，使用了一个抽象的框架，可能无法直接应用于目前的形式。然而，它确实研究了在非中心化的匿名经济中产生鼓励有效行为的规范的条件。 理解有效社会规范的结构也可能对通过互联网进行的有效交流产生影响。阐明在这些情况下确保有效交换所需的信息类型可能有助于我们更好地理解“新经济”中需要使用的规则，以确保其持续的成功和增长。

Project Description for "The Evolution of Bargaining Conventions" byHerbert Dawid and W. Bentley Macleod Legal scholars and economic historians have long recognized theimportance of social conventions and norms for the efficient and smoothoperation of the economy. For example, if an employee feels that his orher employer is fair, then conflict is reduced, and the individual willinvest more into the relationship. However, it is extremely difficult toprecisely define the notion of a fair convention. One approach is to study the evolution of coventions in anexplicit bargaining problem where individuals have to decide how to dividethe gains from trade. The current literature has shown that the 50/50split is a stable convention in a variety of situations. That rule howeverdoes not reward individuals who may contribute more to a relationship, apoint that Grossman and Hart argue may explain why ownership is structuredto make one party a residual claimant to the profits of a firm. What hasnot been studied, and is the object of the current project, is theevolution of bargaining conventions in the presence of relationshipspecific investments. We show that that the addition of relation specific investmentscan result in social conventions that are very different from the 50/50split. Moreover, this research addresses an important open question raisedby Henry Hansmann and Reinier Kraakman, namely why is it efficient forownership to be concentrated in the hands of a single individual or group.We show that depending upon the information structure, both ownership andthe bargaining conventions evolve to a "fair rule" that encouragesefficient relationship specific investments, and low levels of conflict.In particular, we demonstrate that it depends crucially oncomplementarities between the specific investments of the individualswhether such fair and efficient conventions are developed. This work is theoretical and uses an abstract framework that mightnot be directly applicable in its current form. However, it does study theconditions that give rise to norms which encourage efficient behavior in adecentralized, anonymous economy. Understanding the structure ofefficient social norms may also have implications for the efficientrunning of exchange mediated through the internet. Elucidating the type ofinformation needed to ensure efficient exchange in these cases may help usbetter understand the rules that need to be used in "New Economy" toensure its continued success and growth.