The economics of contracts: Theories and applications

Twenty-five papers survey and illustrate approaches to and applications of contract economics. Earlier versions of most of the papers were published in special issue no. 92 of the Revue d'Economie Industrielle entitled "The Economics of Contracts in Prospect and Retrospect" (2000). Papers discuss the New Institutional Economics; contract and economic organization; the role of incomplete contracts in self-enforcing relationships; entrepreneurship, transaction cost economics, and the design of contracts; the contract as economic trade; contract theory and theories of contract regulation; economic reasoning and the framing of contract law; a transaction cost approach to the analysis of property rights; transaction costs and incentive theory; norms and the theory of the firm; allocating decision rights under liquidity constraints; complexity and contract; authority, as flexibility, at the core of labor contracts; positive agency theory; the econometrics of contracts; experiments on moral hazard and incentives; residual claims and self-enforcement as incentive mechanisms in franchise contracts; the quasi-judicial role of large retailers; interconnection agreements in telecommunications networks; licensing in the chemical industry; intercompany agreements and EC competition law; incentive contracts in utility regulation; the performance of different contractual arrangements for water supply in France; lessons from international electricity sector reforms; and a transactions cost perspective on electricity sector restructuring and competition. Brousseau is at the University of Paris X and a member of the Institute Universitaire de France. Glanchant is at the University of Paris XI. Bibliography; name and subject indexes.