Designing effective contracts within the buyer-seller context: a DEMATEL and ANP study

This study examines the factors that contribute to effective contract design within the context of buyer-seller relationship. Research streams on contract factors, supply chain factors, environmental factors, and competitive factors were reviewed to arrive at 18 contract factors. A hybrid model of Decision-Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory (DEMATEL) and Analytic Hierarchy Process (ANP) analysed empirical data collected from 17 experts to weight the importance of contract factors. It was found that most important factors are, in order of significance: policies, supplier technology, force majeure, formality, relationship learning, buyer power, legal actions, liquidated damages, supplier power and partnership

Derivatives and Default Risk

Upstream producers that possess market power, sell forwards with a lengthy duration to regional electricity companies (REC). As part of the liberalization of the electricity market, RECs have been privatized and exposed to a possible bankruptcy threat if spot prices have fallen below their expected value. The downstream firms’ expected profit is larger, when it is less likely to be bailed out, the effect on upstream profits is ambiguous while consumers loose. Options are less welfare increasing than forwards, but the difference is minimal. In the presence of bankruptcy, options are the preferred welfare maximizing market instrument

Capital Structure with Opportunistic Stakeholders' Coalitions

This paper shows that stakeholders' multilateral opportunistic behaviour during financial distress may lead to premature liquidation of the firm. Consequently, the firm will use its capital structure to mitigate the costs of such opportunism. Specifically, the firm will reduce its debt so that the probability of multilateral opportunism is zero; namely, it will use only safe debt. The paper predicts that the debt-equity ratio will decrease with risk, the number of contracts, the difficulty in writing them and in achieving franchising arrangements, the supplier's importance in opportunistic coalitions and a decrease in the firm's size, or the supplier's adjustment costs.Incomplete Contracts, Opportunistic Behaviour, Bankruptcy, Capital Structure.

Derivatives and Default Risk

Upstream producers that possess market power, sell forwards with a lengthy duration to regional electricity companies (REC). As part of the liberalization of the electricity market, RECs have been privatized and exposed to a possible bankruptcy threat if spot prices have fallen below their expected value. The downstream firms’ expected profit is larger, when it is less likely to be bailed out, the effect on upstream profits is ambiguous while consumers loose. Options are less welfare increasing than forwards, but the difference is minimal. In the presence of bankruptcy, options are the preferred welfare maximizing market instrument.Forwards; Options; Default Risk; Market Efficiency

The optimal length of contracts with application to outsourcing

This paper resolves three empirical puzzles in outsourcing by formalizing the adaptation cost of long-term performance contracts. Side-trading with a new partner alongside a long- term contract (to exploit an adaptation-requiring investment) is usually less effective than switching to the new partner when the contract expires. So long-term contracts that prevent holdup of specific investments may induce holdup of adaptation investments. Contract length therefore trades of specific and adaptation investments. Length should increase with the importance and specificity of self-investments, and decrease with the importance of adaptation investments for which side-trading is ineffective. My general model also shows how optimal length falls with cross-investments and wasteful investments.Contract length, market forces, incomplete contracts, holdup

Why don't banks take stock?

Banks in the United States are forbidden to hold stock in nonfinancial firms under most circumstances. The same is not true of banks in other countries. But are U.S. banks really shackled compared with their foreign counterparts? Do such restrictions make a difference in banks' behavior? Mitchell Berlin discusses these and other questions about banks' financial claims in nonfinancial firms and offers some possible answers.Bank stocks ; Stocks

The Business Lawyer as Terrorist Transaction Cost Engineer

Lawyers have garnered a reputation for being unreasonable and excessively contentious. This popular sentiment is embedded in our culture. If lawyers cannot change that perception, a second-best outcome (from the perspective of lawyers) would be the formation of an understanding that there is a reason why they appear to act unreasonably, that it can be desirable for lawyers to act in a way that initially appears to be unreasonable. This Article attempts to build a basis for that understanding in the context of lawyers participating in large commercial transactions

Non-financial stakeholder relationship costs as determinant of capital structure: Empirical evidence from first-time business start-ups.

Titman (1984) is the first to argue that non-financial stakeholders (customers, suppliers and employees) pass on their expected liquidation costs to the firm. In his framework, firms can influence the probability of liquidation by choosing an appropriate capital structure. Other studies have reasoned that the bargaining power of non-financial stakeholders (NFS) may also impact on financing decisions. This paper investigates these ideas in a sample of first-time business start-ups, where ex-ante failure risk is high and NFS have to make relationship-specific investments. We find that the size of NFS liquidation costs significantly reduces leverage and the proportion of bank loans. These effects are strengthened when suppliers have strong bargaining power. Finally, start-ups reduce their reliance on bank loans when customers and suppliers are in a powerful bargaining position.Bargaining power; Capital structure; Liquidation costs; Non-financial stakeholders; Start-ups;