Title: Bilateral contracts with transaction costs

Authors: Kjell Hausken; Galina A. Schwartz

Addresses: Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Stavanger, 4036 Stavanger, Norway. ' Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences (EECS), 337 Cory Hall, MC 1774, Berkeley, CA 94720-1774, USA

Abstract: The paper studies bilateral contracting with endogenous property rights. Players engage in costly ex post adjustment of ex ante contract. After ex ante agreement on surplus sharing, players invest irreversibly production. Player costs of altering ex ante contract are transaction costs of three kinds: measurement, information and enforcement costs. Each player chooses an action which incurs transaction costs and influences the actual ex post surplus sharing. When one player chooses the ex ante contract, each player's equilibrium share increases in his productivity and transaction cost parameters. We address how player investment incentives depend on the interplay between the transaction costs.

Keywords: bilateral contracts; transaction costs; endogenous property rights; surplus sharing; joint production; Cobb-Douglas production function; property rights theory; enterprise development; productivity; investment incentives.

DOI: 10.1504/IJMED.2012.046797

International Journal of Management and Enterprise Development, 2012 Vol.12 No.1, pp.73 - 91

Published online: 06 Sep 2014 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article