Indefinite Agreements, Incomplete Contracts, and Firms

无限期协议、不完整合同和公司

• 批准号: 0519631
• 负责人: Oliver Hart
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: National Bureau of Economic Research Inc
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2005
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2005-09-01 至 2011-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0519631&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Indefinite; Agreements; Incomplete; Contracts; Firms

The PI will develop a new approach that uses economic theory to analyze contracts and agreements. The resulting theory will help us to better understand how firms organize themselves and carry out their activitiesLawyers and economists have traditionally thought of a contract as providing parties withrights and obligations. These rights and obligations may be clearly spelled out (completecontracts) or not so clearly spelled out (incomplete contracts). However, in some casesit may be more useful to think of a contract as an indefinite agreement or agreement to agree. For example, suppose that a conference organizer approaches someone to be a keynote speaker in an event a year hence. The parties might agree on the speaker's fee now, but leave the topic of the speech to be determined later. This agreement is probably not legally binding, but may have value because, in effect, the parties have agreed not to negotiate later about the fee (which has already been set). In other words, the force of the agreement comes from what is ruled out (further bargaining about the fee) rather than from what is ruled in (the particular topic of the speech).In work already developed, the PI has used this approach to explore the trade-off betweenex ante incentives and ex post efficiency. This award funds work that will apply the same approach to understanding the internal organization of the firm. The approach seems well suited to this purpose since employment contracts traditionally have the form that an employee's wage is fixed in advance, while the employee's task is decided later.This research will throw light on a number of important issues. It will help to explain why parties often deliberately write vague and incomplete contracts, and why contracts are short-term rather than long-term. It will throw new light on why much negotiation inside organizations occurs on dimensions other than wages (wages are fixed in advance, other things are not). The results will also provide a new perspective on the motives for corporate mergers. To the extent that the approach explains rigid (real) wages, it may elucidate the reasons for Keynesian-type unemployment.

PI将开发一种新的方法，使用经济理论来分析合同和协议。 由此产生的理论将有助于我们更好地理解企业如何组织自己和开展活动。律师和经济学家传统上认为合同为当事人提供权利和义务。这些权利和义务可以明确规定（完整合同），也可以不明确规定（不完整合同）。 然而，在某些情况下，把合同看作是一种不确定的协议或同意的协议可能更有用。 例如，假设一个会议组织者邀请某人在一年后的某个活动中担任主题演讲人。双方可能现在就演讲者的费用达成一致，但将演讲的主题留待以后确定。该协议可能不具有法律约束力，但可能具有价值，因为实际上，双方已同意以后不再就费用（已确定）进行谈判。换句话说，协议的力量来自于被排除的东西（关于费用的进一步讨价还价），而不是被排除的东西（演讲的特定主题）。在已经开发的工作中，PI已经使用这种方法来探索事前激励和事后效率之间的权衡。 该奖项资助的工作将采用相同的方法来了解公司的内部组织。这种方法似乎非常适合这一目的，因为传统的雇佣合同形式是雇员的工资是事先确定的，而雇员的任务是后来决定的。这将有助于解释为什么当事人经常故意写模糊和不完整的合同，以及为什么合同是短期的而不是长期的。它将为为什么组织内部的许多谈判发生在工资以外的维度（工资是预先确定的，其他事情不是）提供新的解释。 研究结果也将为企业并购动机的研究提供一个新的视角。在某种程度上，这种方法解释了刚性（真实的）工资，它可能阐明凯恩斯式失业的原因。