Signaling an Outside Option

We consider the case of an upstream seller who works to improve an asset that has been specialized to a downstream buyer's needs. The buyer then makes a take it or leave it offer to the seller about how the future surplus should be split. We assume that the seller from the outset has private information about the fraction of the surplus that he can realize on his own, and show that this leads to higher investment compared to the complete information case. This positive effect on investment is countervailed by the occurrence of inefficient separations, which result when the buyer mistakenly tries to call the seller's bluff with a low offer

On the Interplay of Hidden Action and Hidden Information in Simple Bilateral Trading Problems

A buyer and a seller can exchange one unit of an indivisible good. While producing the good, the seller can exert unobservable effort (hidden action). Then the buyer realizes whether his valuation is high or low, which stochastically depends upon the seller's effort level (hidden information). The parties are risk neutral, they can rule out renegotiation and write complete contracts. It is shown that the first best cannot be achieved whenever the ex post efficient trade decision is trivial. The second-best contract is characterized and an application of the model to the choice of risky projects is briefly discussed.Hidden Action; Hidden Information; Hold-up Problem

Monopolistic Licensing Strategies under Asymmetric Information

Consider a research lab that owns a patent on a new technology but cannot develop a marketable final product based on the new technology. There are two downstream firms that might successfully develop the new product. If the downstream firms' benefits from being the sole supplier of the new product are private information, the research lab will sometimes sell two licences, even though under complete information it would have sold one exclusive licence. This is in contrast to the standard result that a monopolist will sometimes serve less, but never more buyers when there is private information.Licences; Innovation; Monopoly; Private information

On the Joint Use of Liability and Safety Regulation

The efficiency of two different means of controlling hazardous economic activities, namely ex post liability for harm done and ex ante safety regulation, is re-examined. Some researchers have stressed that the complementary use of these two instruments can be socially advantageous. Here it is argued that the models which have been built in order to support this view crucially depend on the assumption that there are persistent enforcement errors. It is demonstrated that such a rather unsatisfactory assumption is not needed if wealth varies among injurers.Liability; Safety Regulation

On contractual solutions to hold-up problems with quality uncertainty and unobservable investments

A seller and a buyer can write a contract. After that, the seller produces a good. She can influence the expected quality of the good by making unobservable investments. Only the seller learns the realized quality. Finally, trade can occur. It is always ex post efficient to trade. Yet, it may be impossible to achieve the first best, even though the risk-neutral parties are symmetrically informed at the contracting stage and complete contracts can be written. The second best is characterized by distortions that are reminiscent of adverse selection models (i.e., models with precontractual private information but without hidden actions).Hold-up problem; hidden action; hidden information; common values

Partial Privatization and Incomplete Contracts: The Proper Scope of Government Reconsidered

In this paper it is argued that privatization is not the only alternative to public ownership. Adopting the incomplete contract approach, it is shown that partial privatization may well be the optimal ownership structure. While in the standard incomplete contract model joint ownership is usually dominated, it is shown here that joint ownership in the form of partial privatization can be optimal since it mitigates the disadvantages of public ownership (no incentives to improve quality if the manager invests or too strong incentives if the government invests) and of privatization (too strong incentives for the manager to reduce costs).Partial Privatization; Public Ownership; Incomplete Contracts

On simple contracts, renegotiation under asymmetric information, and the hold-up problem

In this paper it is demonstrated that voluntary bargaining over a collective decision under asymmetric information may well lead to ex post efficiency if the default decision is non-trivial. It is argued that the default decision may be interpreted as a 'simple' contract that the parties have written ex ante. This result is used in order to show that simple unconditional contracts which are renegotiated may allow the hold-up problem to be solved, even if the parties' valuations are private information.Contract theory; Private information; Hold-up problem

Book Review of “Property Rights: Cooperation, Conflict, and Law” (Anderson and McChesney, 2003)

In this working paper, T.L. Anderson and F.S. McChesney’s book “Property Rights: Cooperation, Conflict, and Law” is discussed.

The Hold-Up Problem and Incomplete Contracts: A Survey of Recent Topics in Contract Theory

This article provides a non-technical survey on recent topics in the theory of contracts. The hold-up problem is presented and the incomplete contracts approach is discussed. Emphasis is put on conceptual problems and open questions that await further research.Contract Theory; Hold-Up Problem; Incomplete Contracts

Monopolistic Provision of Excludable Public Goods under Private Information

This paper characterizes the optimal contract designed by a profit-maximizing monopolist, who can provide an indivisible and excludable public good to a group of n potential consumers, whose valuations are private information. The analysis takes distribution costs and congestion effects into account. The second-best allocation rule, which is welfare-maximizing under the constraint of non-negative profits, is characterized. Properties of the optimal mechanism in the case of many potential consumers are analyzed and it is shown that in this case the monopolist can use simple posted-price contracts. Finally, implications for public intervention are discussed.