Fiche du document
2 décembre 2012
- handle: 10670/1.kc3htj
- hal: hal-00759794
Mots-clés
Contentious ContractsSujets proches
Contract law Contracts--Law and legislation Contractual limitations Limitations, Contractual Agreements Agency (Philosophy) Agents Person (Philosophy)Citer ce document
Ulrich Hege et al., « Contentious Contracts », HALSHS : archive ouverte en Sciences de l’Homme et de la Société, ID : 10670/1.kc3htj
Métriques
Partage / Export
Résumé
This paper offers an explanation of rationally incomplete contracts, where incompleteness refers to unforeseen contingencies. Agents enter a two-sided moral hazard relationship, in which a commitment to discard parts of the joint resources may be ex-ante efficient. This happens through costly legal dispute which arises when contract terms are missing for undesirable outcomes. We show that an optimal contract needs only to specify the obligation for the more litigious party to assure a certain output level--the threshold between foreseen and unforeseen contingencies--and a linear sharing rule for the foreseen contingencies. If litigation reveals some information about the effort levels of the agents, less costly dispute is typically needed and the allocation will improve.