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Contracts
Kinds of Contracts Terms modified by Contracts Selected AbstractsTHE USE OF CONTRACT BY GOVERNMENT AND ITS AGENTSECONOMIC AFFAIRS, Issue 1 2009Martin Ricketts Given that the provision of a service is being controlled by the state, the decision whether to contract out that service provision to the private sector is essentially a business decision. A number of economic advantages and disadvantages need to be offset against each other. Governments are poorly placed to make such decisions and it is no surprise that PPPs are often inefficient and steered by political objectives. [source] RESPECTING HUMAN DIGNITY: CONTRACT VERSUS CAPABILITIESMETAPHILOSOPHY, Issue 3-4 2009CYNTHIA A. STARK Abstract: There appears to be a tension between two commitments in liberalism. The first is that citizens, as rational agents possessing dignity, are owed a justification for principles of justice. The second is that members of society who do not meet the requirements of rational agency are owed justice. These notions conflict because the first commitment is often expressed through the device of the social contract, which seems to confine the scope of justice to rational agents. So, contractarianism seems to ignore the justice claims of the severely cognitively impaired. To solve this problem, Martha Nussbaum proposes the capabilities approach. The justifiability condition, on this approach, is met by the idea of overlapping consensus. This essay argues that overlapping consensus cannot meet liberalism's justifiability condition, nor is it more inclusive of the cognitively impaired. Therefore, we have reason to retain the contract device and look for another way to ensure that liberalism respects the justice claims of all. [source] THE MOUNTAINS ARE HIGH AND THE EMPEROR IS FAR AWAY: SANCTITY OF CONTRACT IN CHINAAMERICAN BUSINESS LAW JOURNAL, Issue 3 2003Patricia Pattison First page of article [source] BREACH AND FULFILLMENT OF THE PSYCHOLOGICAL CONTRACT: A COMPARISON OF TRADITIONAL AND EXPANDED VIEWSPERSONNEL PSYCHOLOGY, Issue 4 2003LISA SCHURER LAMBERT Breach and fulfillment in a psychological contract has traditionally been studied with approaches that are conceptually and methodologically limited. We compared predictions derived from the traditional view to predictions from an expanded view that maintains the distinction between promised and delivered inducements and examines their joint relationship with employee satisfaction. The traditional and expanded views were compared using longitudinal data and polynomial regression analysis. Results provided little support for the traditional view. In contrast, results supported the expanded view and revealed that relationships for breach and fulfillment are more complex than previously suggested. Specifically, satisfaction depended on whether breach represented deficient or excess inducements and the particular inducement under consideration. Moreover, satisfaction was more strongly related to delivered inducements than promised inducements. These results question basic tenets of psychological contract research and indicate new avenues for research that build on the expanded view developed in this article. [source] LICENSING CONTRACT IN A STACKELBERG MODEL,THE MANCHESTER SCHOOL, Issue 5 2005LUIGI FILIPPINI We study optimal linear licensing and its social welfare implications when the innovator (patentee) is an insider that can make capacity/output commitment so as to act as a Stackelberg leader in the output market. We show that (i) the patentee's profit-maximizing licensing contract is a royalty; (ii) the optimal royalty rate is greater than the cost reduction attained by the licensed technology and is increasing in the number of competitors; (iii) optimal licensing maximizes the likelihood of technology transfer, may reduce social welfare and always makes consumers worse off; and (iv) the innovator benefits from capacity commitment, and the more competitive the output market, the greater the gains it makes by licensing. The opposite holds for consumers. [source] INEQUALITY, INCOMPLETE CONTRACTS, AND THE SIZE DISTRIBUTION OF BUSINESS FIRMS,INTERNATIONAL ECONOMIC REVIEW, Issue 2 2010Thomas Gall This article analyzes the effects of intrafirm bargaining on the formation of firms in an economy with imperfect capital markets and contracting constraints. In equilibrium, wealth inequality induces a heterogeneous distribution of firm sizes, allowing for firms both too small and too large in terms of technical efficiency. The findings connect well to empirical facts such as the missing middle of firm-size distributions in developing countries. The model can encompass a nonmonotonic relationship between aggregate output and inequality. It turns out that an inflow of capital may indeed decrease output in absolute terms. [source] WHAT DO ECONOMISTS TELL US ABOUT VENTURE CAPITAL CONTRACTS?JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC SURVEYS, Issue 1 2007Tereza Tykvová Abstract Venture capital markets are characterized by multiple incentive problems and asymmetric information. Entrepreneurs and venture capitalists enter into contracts that influence their behaviour and mitigate the agency costs. In particular, they select an appropriate kind and structure of financing and specify the rights as well as the duties of both parties. The typical features of venture capital investments are an intensive screening and evaluation process, active involvement of venture capitalists in their portfolio companies, staging of capital infusions, use of special financing instruments such as convertible debt or convertible preferred stock, syndication among venture capitalists or limited investment horizon. [source] DOLLARIZATION OF DEBT CONTRACTS: EVIDENCE FROM CHILEAN FIRMSTHE DEVELOPING ECONOMIES, Issue 4 2009Miguel FUENTES F31; F49 This paper uses a new data set to estimate the causes and consequences of foreign currency debt in firms' balance sheets. The evidence from this sample of Chilean firms indicates that dollar-denominated debt increases with firms' size and degree of exposure to foreign competition. We find evidence that dollar-denominated debt combines with exchange rate movements to produce a negative balance-sheet effect that reduces firms' investment in periods of strong exchange rate depreciation. This negative balance-sheet effect is associated with long-term debt and appears to be nonlinear in the amount of real exchange rate depreciation. [source] OPTIMAL CONTRACTS FOR CENTRAL BANKERS AND PUBLIC DEBT POLICY*THE JAPANESE ECONOMIC REVIEW, Issue 4 2004HIROSHI FUJIKI We consider how the second-best allocation corresponding to an optimal rule under the policy commitment of a central bank and a fiscal authority with a consolidated government budget constraint can be achieved, even though these authorities are unable to commit themselves to their optimal policies and ignore the strategic interaction between their policies. Our results show that the best practical institutional arrangement is to have an instrument-independent central bank that controls the money supply to determine the rate of inflation and commits itself to an inflation target that depends on fiscal variables. [source] ESTIMATING THE VALUE OF DELIVERY OPTIONS IN FUTURES CONTRACTSTHE JOURNAL OF FINANCIAL RESEARCH, Issue 3 2005Jana Hranaiova Abstract We analyze the effect various delivery options embedded in commodity futures contracts have on the futures price. The two embedded options considered are the timing and location options. We show that early delivery is always optimal when only a timing option is present, but not so when joint options are present. The estimates of the combined options are much smaller than the comparable estimates for the timing option alone. The average value of the joint option is about 5% of the average basis on the first day of the maturity month. This suggests that joint options can increase deliverable supplies while potentially having only a small effect on basis behavior. [source] THE IMPORTANCE OF REPUTATION IN AWARDING PUBLIC CONTRACTSANNALS OF PUBLIC AND COOPERATIVE ECONOMICS, Issue 4 2006Nicola Doni ABSTRACT,:,The main economic literature emphasizes that the efficiency of the awarding procedure depends on the contractual rules, especially those regarding firm's remuneration. In this work we show the existence of a reverse link: when the enforcement of contractual terms is imperfect, the rules of the awarding mechanism can help to improve the efficiency of the contractual relationship. In some circumstances, awarding rules based only on bids are not able to deal with the problem of opportunistic behaviour during the execution of the contract. Our model points out that the public administration can incentivize the contractor's fairness by considering not only competitors' bids, but also their different reputation. [source] Working Under Contract for the Vegetable Agroindustry in Mexico: A Means of SurvivalCULTURE, AGRICULTURE, FOOD & ENVIRONMENT, Issue 3 2001Flavia Echánove Huacuja First page of article [source] Efficiency in the Pricing of the FTSE 100 Futures ContractEUROPEAN FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT, Issue 1 2001Joëlle Miffre This paper studies the pricing efficiency in the FTSE 100 futures contract by linking the predictable movements in futures returns to the time-varying risk and risk premia associated with prespecified factors. The results indicate that the predictability of the FTSE 100 futures returns is consistent with a conditional multifactor model with time-varying moments. The dynamics of the factor risk premia, combined with the variation in the betas, capture most of the predictable variance of returns, leaving little variation to be explained in terms of market inefficiency. Hence the predictive power of the instruments does not justify a rejection of market efficiency. [source] The Return of the Contract: Problems and Pitfalls of European ConstitutionalismEUROPEAN LAW JOURNAL, Issue 3 2000Gu¨nter Frankenberg First page of article [source] The Fall and Renewal of the Commission: Accountability, Contract and Administrative OrganisationEUROPEAN LAW JOURNAL, Issue 2 2000Paul Craig The fall of the Santer Commission, prompted by the Report of the Committee of Independent Experts, sent shock waves throughout the entire Community. This article seeks to examine the nature of the problems which beset the Commission, to place these within the broader context of decision-making by public bodies, and to consider also the responsibilities of the Council and European Parliament for the delivery of agreed Community policies. The article analyses in detail the Reports of the Committee of Independent Experts, and the subsequent reforms initiated by the Prodi Commission, in order to assess the prospects for improved service delivery in the future. [source] Contract Mixing in Franchising as a Mechanism for Public-Good ProvisionJOURNAL OF ECONOMICS & MANAGEMENT STRATEGY, Issue 1 2000Chong-En Bai This paper is concerned with the coexistence of company-owned units and franchised units in business format franchising and their different contractual arrangements. Drawing insights from case studies that indicate both the development and the maintenance of company-wide brand names and unit-specific sales activities are crucial to a franchise company, we construct a multitask model to account for such contract mixing in franchising. Intuitively, low-powered contracts are offered to some managers to induce effort for brand-name development and maintenance, while high-powered contracts are offered to the remaining managers to elicit sales activity and capture the beneficial effect of the company brand name. Franchising can thus be viewed as an organizational agreement for production involving brand-name products and services. [source] What's in a Standard Form Contract?JOURNAL OF EMPIRICAL LEGAL STUDIES, Issue 4 2007An Empirical Analysis of Software License Agreements The vast majority of commercial transactions are governed by standard form contracts, but little is known about their actual content and the determinants of that content. This article provides a comprehensive empirical analysis of an important class of modern standard form contracts,software license agreements. In a sample of 647 licenses for software from various markets, I document the prevalence of terms relating to license acceptance, license scope, limitations on transfer, warranties, limitations on liability, maintenance and support, and conflict resolution. I find that almost all licenses display a net bias, relative to relevant default rules, in favor of the software company (the contract writer). I also investigate firm- and buyer-type determinants of the net bias. Larger and (controlling for size) younger firms offer more one-sided terms. Firms offer similar terms to both business buyers and members of the general public. In addition to providing new insight about the nature of standard form contracts, the results may inform efforts to draft new default rules to govern software transactions. [source] An Extension of Arrow's Result on Optimal Reinsurance ContractJOURNAL OF RISK AND INSURANCE, Issue 2 2008Marek Kaluszka We consider the problem of finding reinsurance policies that maximize the expected utility, the stability and the survival probability of the cedent for a fixed reinsurance premium calculated according to the maximal possible claims principle. We show that the limited stop loss and the truncated stop loss are the optimal contracts. [source] Welfare Reform in America: A Clash of Politics and ResearchJOURNAL OF SOCIAL ISSUES, Issue 4 2000Diana M. Zuckerman The 1996 welfare reform law radically changed welfare as we knew it, after many years of debate and concerns across the ideological spectrum. Research should have provided essential information to revise the program, but instead, research was used as an ideological weapon to support conflicting points of view. President Clinton promised to end welfare as we know it but his welfare reform plan was superceded by the election of a Republican majority of the House and Senate in 1994. The resulting welfare bill included key elements from the Republican Contract with America. The purpose of this article is to describe how political pressures resulted in a dramatic change in law, despite doomsday predictions and almost no solid information about the law's likely impact. [source] Risk Aversion and the Efficiency Wage ContractLABOUR, Issue 1 2004Ouassila Chouikhi This could be due to informational problems. Reformulating the Shapiro and Stiglitz model as a sequential game, this paper examines the relations between the terms of the efficiency wage contract offered by a firm and the responses of a worker, under incomplete information about the degree of risk aversion of the firm and the worker. It shows that under incomplete information about the degree of risk aversion of the worker, shirking can emerge as an equilibrium phenomenon. For any efficiency wage contract, a worker will shirk if the degree of risk aversion of the worker is less than that corresponding to the contract. [source] Mutual Misunderstanding in ContractAMERICAN BUSINESS LAW JOURNAL, Issue 4 2009Benjamin Alarie First page of article [source] Freedom of Contract and Default Contractual Duties in Delaware Limited Partnerships and Limited Liability CompaniesAMERICAN BUSINESS LAW JOURNAL, Issue 2 2009Myron T. Steele First page of article [source] Latin America and the Social Contract: Patterns of Social Spending and TaxationPOPULATION AND DEVELOPMENT REVIEW, Issue 4 2009Karla Breceda This article analyzes the incidence of social spending and taxation by income quintile for seven Latin American countries, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Absolute levels of social spending in Latin America are fairly flat across income quintiles, a pattern similar to that in the United States and differing from the more progressive pattern of spending in the United Kingdom. The structure of taxation in Latin America is also similar to that of the United States. Because of high income inequality in Latin America and the US, the rich bear of most the burden, whereas the United Kingdom taxes the middle class to a greater extent. The analysis suggests that many Latin American countries are trapped in a vicious cycle in which the rich resist the expansion of the welfare state (because they bear most of its tax burden without receiving commensurate benefits), and their opposition to its expansion in turn maintains long-term inequalities. [source] Divided Government and Democratic Presidents: Truman and Clinton ComparedPRESIDENTIAL STUDIES QUARTERLY, Issue 2 2000RICHARD S. CONLEY This article compares the experiences of President Truman in the 80th Congress and President Clinton in the 104th Congress. The impact of divided government is measured by examining presidential involvement on significant legislation in the two periods, presidential floor success rates, and congressional support for the president on domestic policy and veto override attempts. The article concludes that innovative legislation in both periods was largely congressionally driven, while voting alignments in Congress ultimately affected each president's ability to control policy outcomes through the use of the veto. Regional fragmentation in the Democratic Party and Republican unity combined to undercut Truman's ability to marshal strong support on his legislative stands or on veto override attempts, contributing to a series of successful anti,New Deal measures. Democratic Party cohesion in the 104th Congress allowed Clinton to ward off veto override attempts and stifle much of the Republican agenda outlined in the Contract with America. [source] Modeling the Korean Chonsei Lease ContractREAL ESTATE ECONOMICS, Issue 1 2003Brent W. Ambrose Chonsei is a unique Korean lease contract in which the tenant pays an up,front deposit, typically about 40 to 80% of the value of the property, with no requirement for periodic rent payments. At the contract maturation, the landlord then returns the nominal value of the deposit. Since there is no legal obligation on the part of the landlord to deposit the money in an escrow account, the principal default risk associated with the chonsei contract falls on the tenant. We discuss the development and popularity of this contractual agreement in the context of the public policy initiatives, historical and institutional settings surrounding the Korean housing and housing finance market. We develop a contingent,claims model that recognizes the compound options embedded in the chonsei contract. Theoretical predictions are confirmed by an empirical analysis using monthly data from 1986 to 2000. Our analysis shows that the chonsei contract is an indigenous market response to economic conditions prevalent in Korea. [source] Genes and Spleens: Property, Contract, or Privacy Rights in the Human Body?THE JOURNAL OF LAW, MEDICINE & ETHICS, Issue 3 2007Radhika Rao This article compares three frameworks for legal regulation of the human body. Property law systematically favors those who use the body to create commercial products. Yet contract and privacy rights cannot compete with the property paradigm, which alone affords a complete bundle of rights enforceable against the whole world. In the face of researchers' property rights, the theoretical freedom to contract and the meager interest in privacy leave those who supply body parts vulnerable to exploitation. [source] The Evolution of the Financial Contract in Economic DevelopmentTHE MANCHESTER SCHOOL, Issue 2 2004Niloy Bose This paper presents an analysis of the joint determination of real and financial development. The analysis is based on a simple endogenous growth model in which a borrower's risk type is private information. Our innovation is to determine jointly the equilibrium loan contract and the economy's growth path. We show that at a low level of development an economy is likely to experience a large incidence of credit rationing. As capital accumulates, credit rationing may fall as a result of the emergence of a new contract regime in which agents mitigate information friction by making use of available information. This change in behaviour results in a higher capital accumulation path and a higher steady-state capital stock. [source] The Assessment of Gain-Based Damages for Breach of ContractTHE MODERN LAW REVIEW, Issue 4 2008Ralph Cunnington This article argues that there are two different measures of gain-based damages for breach of contract: the Wrotham Park measure and the Blake measure. The former is assessed by reference to the objective value of the benefit received by the defendant and the latter by reference to the defendant's subjective gain. In assessing Wrotham Park damages the courts apply a fixed formula, determining the price that a reasonable person in the position of the claimant might have demanded from the defendant at the time of breach for relaxing its rights under the contract. The Blake measure is different; it requires the defendant to disgorge the actual net profit received from the breach. Unlike the Wrotham Park measure, it deals only with positive and not negative gains. It is also limited by the doctrine of causation so that only those gains that are ,directly occasioned' by the breach are recoverable. [source] The Continuing Conceptual Crisis in the Common Law of the Contract of EmploymentTHE MODERN LAW REVIEW, Issue 3 2004Lizzie Barmes The effects on the common law of the contract of employment of the decision of the House of Lords in Johnson v Unisys Ltd are considered. The focus is on liability rather than remedies. It is argued that the case created conceptual instability in the common law understanding of a breach of a contract of employment. The logical consequence of the majority reasoning is that in some cases the existence or not of a breach by an employer is contingent on an employee's reaction. Relevant case law history and developments since the Johnson decision inform a detailed critique of the arguments that underpinned it. A solution is suggested according to which, prima facie, contracts of employment would be required to be performed in accordance with terms that have been implied by law. [source] Lifetime Employment Contract and Strategic Entry Deterrence: Cournot and BertrandAUSTRALIAN ECONOMIC PAPERS, Issue 1 2001Kazuhiro Ohnishi This paper is based on a two-stage model of an incumbent firm and a potential entrant, and studies both quantity-setting competition and price-setting competition. We consider a lifetime-employment-contract policy as a strategic commitment that generates kinks in the reaction curve. Furthermore, demand functions are classified into two cases in terms of the strategic relevance between both firms. Therefore, we examine the following four cases: ,quantity-setting competition with strategic substitutes', ,quantity-setting competition with strategic complements', ,price-setting competition with strategic substitutes' and ,price-setting competition with strategic complements'. The purpose of this paper is to analyse entry deterrence in the four cases and to show the effectiveness of the lifetime-employment-contract policy as a result of its analyses. [source] | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||