Incomplete Contracts, Reference Points, and Firms

不完整的合同、参考点和公司

• 批准号: 0922325
• 负责人: Oliver Hart
• 金额: $ 23.89万
• 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: 2009
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2009-09-15 至 2015-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0922325&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Incomplete; Contracts; Reference; Points; Firms

This award funds work in contract theory. The PI continues his research in the economic theory of contracts. Lawyers and economists have traditionally thought of a contract as providing parties with rights and obligations. The PI is developing a complementary idea: contracts provide reference points that create a sense of entitlement in each of the contracting parties. A flexible contract is good in that it allows parties to adjust to an observable but unverifiable state of the world. However, a flexible contract is bad because it may create argument about what outcome has occurred. Argument leads to aggrievement, which causes parties to shirk on non-contractible effort, leading to a loss of efficiency.The PI has already used this approach to analyze the employment relationship and the costs and benefits of vertical organization. This approach also yields new and more general insight into internal organization of firms.This research can help to explain why much negotiation inside an organization focuses on working conditions rather than wages. It also provides new perspectives on the motives for corporate merges and sheds light on the rules that courts should use to interpret contracts that are deliberately left incomplete by the contracting parties.

该奖项资助合同理论的工作。 PI继续他在合同经济理论方面的研究。 传统上，律师和经济学家认为合同为当事人提供了权利和义务。 PI正在开发一个补充的想法：合同提供了参考点，在每个缔约方中创造了一种权利感。 灵活的合同是好的，因为它允许各方调整到一个可观察但无法验证的世界状态。 然而，灵活的合同是不好的，因为它可能会引起关于发生了什么结果的争论。 争论会导致不满，这会导致各方推卸不可收缩的努力，导致效率损失。PI已经使用这种方法分析了雇佣关系和垂直组织的成本和收益。 这一方法也产生了新的和更普遍的洞察企业的内部组织。这一研究可以帮助解释为什么许多组织内部的谈判集中在工作条件，而不是工资。 它还提供了关于公司合并动机的新视角，并阐明了法院应用来解释合同当事人故意不完整的合同的规则。