The Evolution of Investment Conventions

法律学者和经济历史学家早就认识到社会习俗和规范对经济高效平稳运行的重要性。例如，如果一名员工觉得他的雇主是公平的，那么冲突就会减少，个人也会在这段关系中投入更多。然而，精确地定义公平约定的概念是极其困难的。一种方法是在个体必须决定如何分配贸易收益的明确议价问题中研究契约的演变。目前的文献表明，在各种情况下，50/50的分割是一个稳定的惯例。然而，这条规则并没有奖励那些可能对一段关系贡献更多的个人，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索者。尚未被研究的是，当前项目的目标是，在关系特定投资存在的情况下，讨价还价惯例的演变。我们表明，关系特定投资的增加可能会导致与50/50分割非常不同的社会习俗。此外，本研究解决了Henry Hansmann和Reinier Kraakman提出的一个重要的开放性问题，即为什么所有权集中在单个个人或群体手中是有效的。我们表明，根据信息结构的不同，所有权和议价惯例都演变成一种“公平规则”，鼓励有效的关系特定投资和低水平的冲突。特别是，我们证明，这种公平和有效的公约是否得到发展，关键取决于个人具体投资之间的互补性。这项工作是理论性的，使用了一个抽象的框架，可能不能直接适用于目前的形式。然而，它确实研究了在去中心化、匿名经济中产生鼓励有效行为的规范的条件。了解有效社会规范的结构也可能对通过互联网中介的交换的效率产生影响。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.