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Guest et al (2015) identified the need to reduce unwarranted variation in the assessment and treatment of wounds across the patient pathway. Integrated care across Doncaster identified the same need locally. After discussion with a number of stakeholders, organisations and services that provided wound care interventions, to identify how Doncaster could move forward to reduce unwarranted variations and a Doncaster Wound Care Alliance was formed. The Alliance developed a tiered service model, a universal competency-based education programme, formulary and clinical pathways, with the aim of enabling patients living with a wound in Doncaster to have access to a service that was responsive to patient centred specialist need to deliver advice and provide high quality, evidence-based interventions by highly skilled and trained healthcare professionals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using the staggered introduction of fast-track debt recovery courts in India, we estimate the causal effect of a reduction in debt contract enforcement costs on financing and asset maturity. A reduction in enforcement costs is associated with an increase in long-term debt and a decrease in short-term debt and trade credit. The increase in debt maturity is confined to firms that borrow from multiple lenders, have abnormally short debt maturity structures before the reform, and to smaller firms. Firms also reduce the number of banking relationships, and increase the proportion of long-term assets after the reform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contract law has a multidimensional role permeating the economic and social spheres of life, connecting people in mutual relations. Despite its potential, contract law is largely overlooked by the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD). Moreover, contract law is often examined through a unidimensional lens, facilitating transactions between economic actors. English contract law, rooted in the classical pillars of sanctity and freedom of contract, makes no exception. The links between the values pursued by the CRPD and English contract law are akin to unfinished bridges. The completion of these bridges is imperative, given the likely increase in the number of parties whose capacity to understand the implications of transactions is affected by mental health conditions, including dementia. Focusing on undue influence and unconscionability, this article searches for a vision of contact law that embraces social values, especially the CRPD value of respect for human dignity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the Dutch health care system, health insurers negotiate with hospitals about the pricing of hospital products in a managed competition framework. In this paper, we study these contract prices that became for the first time publicly available in 2016. The data show substantive price variation between hospitals for the same products, and within a hospital for the same product across insurers. About 27% of the contract prices for a hospital product are at least 20% higher or lower than the average contract price in the market. For about half of the products, the highest and the lowest contract prices across hospitals differ by a factor of three or more. Moreover, hospital product prices do not follow a consistent ranking across hospitals, suggesting substantial cross-subsidization between hospital products. Potential explanations for the large and seemingly random price variation are: (i) different cost pricing methods used by hospitals, (ii) uncertainty due to frequent changes in the hospital payment system, (iii) price adjustments related to negotiated lumpsum payments and (iv) differences in hospital and insurer market power. Several policy options are discussed to reduce variation and increase transparency of hospital prices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Changes in the regulatory context enable faster approval of transformative medicines. They also lead to health technology assessment (HTA) agencies having to make decisions with less evidence. In response, HTA agencies have also initiated forms of conditional approval. When the evidence base for a new oncology treatment leaves substantial uncertainty, the new Cancer Drugs Fund allows the National Institute for Heath and Care Excellence to give the manufacturer two options: (1) offer a low price based on conservative assumptions and obtain immediate approval ("stick") or (2) wait until the evidence base has further matured before finalizing a potentially higher agreed price ("twist").Objectives: The purpose of this article is to explain how, using the theoretical framework of the expected value of sample information, simulation methods can help inform a manufacturer's decisions when faced with the option to stick or twist.Methods: We first summarize a general model to help frame the manufacturer's negotiating strategy. We then use a motivating case study, based on a hypothetical immunotherapy, to illustrate how manufacturers can use simulation methods to robustly characterize the uncertainty inherent to further data collection and incorporate this uncertainty within their decision making.Results: Our approach allows us to estimate the commercial value of generating additional data (the difference between the estimated net present value of stick and twist). We test the sensitivity of the results to different assumptions via scenario analyses.Conclusions: This article shows that simulation methods can be used to help pharmaceutical managers make informed strategic decisions in contexts of uncertainty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on legal impossibility doctrine in commercial contracts. It also mentions significant differences between the legal doctrine and the economic analysis and risk of non-performance to the cheapest risk bearer, the economic model minimizes the costs of remote risks. It also mentions courts should assign the loss caused by noncompliance to the contracting party.

A primary source of asymmetric information arises from banks' uncertainty about borrowers 'Creditworthiness. This can generate two types of barriers to efficient credit allocation in the loan market: ad-verse selection in the likelihood of repayment and moral hazard in the riskiness of firms' business decisions, also affecting repayment. This study investigated the consequences of asymmetric information on Islamic financial contracts in the Pakistani market for small and medium enterprise (SME) business lines of credit. Islamic bank's main financial contracts were discuss the two of them which are Istisna and Murabaha. The methods of' T test' was conducted to ascertain the difference in means of both forms of financing, whereas Multiple Regression Analysis using panel data to assess the relationship of critical variables with Disbursed amount, profit rate, spread, tenor. Data of three year i.e. from 2016 to2018 of 35 firms, with 105 numbers of observations having istisna and Murabaha contract, were taken. The results suggested that both the means of Murabaha and istisna financing are significantly different in major performance indicators, implicating companies that have taken these two financing have performed differently. Secondly, in most of the ratio that mattered like efficiency and profitability, Murabaha based financing have yielded results that are more efficient and better performed as compared to istisna). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In many industries, integrated hierarchical organizations have been replaced by nonhierarchical entities that are permeable, interconnected, and modular. Other industries, however, maintain relatively high levels of integration. We use the logic of general systems modularity to explain why in some industries there is a greater use of modular organizational forms, including contract manufacturing, alternative work arrangements, and alliances, than in other industries. This model was tested using data from 330 U.S. manufacturing industries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Choice Theory of Contracts is an ambitious, concise, and largely successful contribution to contract theory. Choice Theory is a liberal theory of contract law, grounded in a rich notion of autonomy, which stresses the obligation of the legal system to enhance our autonomy by ensuring the multiplicity of contractual types within the spheres of family, employment, home, and commerce.This article mitigates three shortcomings in The Choice Theory of Contracts and tries to carry Choice Theory further. A first shortcoming of the book is that the critique of transfer theory fails to acknowledge its analytical value. Second, in Part II of the book, Dagan and Heller overlap two issues: what the goods of contract are, and the compatibility of Choice Theory with the key concepts used by mainstream contract theories. Finally, Dagan and Heller do not fully acknowledge that the value of our autonomy is related to our ability to choose well. These revisions are useful to channelling scholarly attention on the implementation of Choice Theory and to sharpening the conceptual tools needed to do so.To show the potential of Choice Theory, this article carries it further. First, the economic concept of consumer sovereignty extends the programme of autonomy-grounded economic theories of contracts. Second, the size of the communities in which contractual relationships are created helps understand how various doctrines and even entire branches of the law foster the autonomy-enhancing capacity of contracts.The article concludes with a series of suggestions for carrying Choice Theory even further. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main purpose of this study was to investigate coopetition with a risk-pooling arrangement in the railroad industry. The study discusses whether railroad companies voluntarily sign free alternative transportation contracts, which are contracts where non-suspended lines provide railroad services to affected passengers when some lines are suspended. The main results of this study can be summarized as follows. First, railroad companies do voluntarily wish to sign free alternative transportation contracts. In other words, coopetition with a risk-pooling arrangement is always realized. Second, in the case of a monopolistic line, when the probability of an accident occurring is relatively high, it is desirable for policy makers to provide a new line and achieve a risk-pooling arrangement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The use of radioprotectors and radiomitigators could improve the therapeutic index of radiation therapy. With the intention of accelerating translation of radiation-effect modulators (radioprotectors and mitigators), the Radiation Research Program and SBIR (Small Business Innovation Research) Development Center within the National Cancer Institute issued 4 Requests for Proposals (RFPs) from 2010 to 2013. Twelve SBIR contract awards in total were made in response to the 4 RFPs from September 2011 through September 2014. Here, we provide an update on the status of SBIR contract projects for the development of radiation-effect modulators.Methods and Materials: To assess the status of research and development efforts under the 4 RFPs on radiation-effect modulators, we searched PubMed for research articles, google.com for published abstracts, clinicaltrials.gov for ongoing or completed clinical trials, and company websites for press releases and other news. All information obtained and reported here is publicly available and thus protects the intellectual property of the investigators and companies.Results: Of the 12 SBIR projects funded, 5 (42%) transitioned successfully from phase 1 to phase 2 SBIR funding, and among the Fast-Track contracts, this rate was 100% (3 of 3). The Internet search identified 3 abstracts and 6 publications related to the aims of the SBIR contracts. One-third of the companies (4 of 12) have successfully launched a total of 8 clinical trials to demonstrate the safety and efficacy of their investigational agents. Two drugs are in clinical trials for their indication as a radioprotector, and 2 drugs are under evaluation for their anticancer properties (an immunomodulator and a small molecule inhibitor).Conclusions: The National Cancer Institute's SBIR has provided pivotal funding to small businesses for the development of radioprotectors and radiomitigators, which resulted in multiple early-phase clinical trials. Longer follow-up is needed to determine the full impact of these novel therapeutics that enter clinical practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contracting out of public services, especially ancillary services, has been a key feature of New Public Management since the 1980s. By 2014, more than £100 billion of U.K. public services were being contracted out annually to the private sector. A number of high‐profile cases have prompted a debate about the value for money that these contracts provide. Value for money comprises both the cost and the quality of the services. This article empirically tests the contestability and quality shading hypotheses of contracting out in the context of cleaning services in the English National Health Service. Additionally, a new hypothesis of coupling is presented and tested: the effect of contracting of ancillary services on patient health outcomes, using the hospital‐acquired infection rate as our measure. Using data from 2010–11 to 2013–14 for 130 National Health Service trusts, the study finds that private providers are cheaper but dirtier than their in‐house counterparts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article comments on the paper "Contracting Costs, Inflation, and Relative Price Variability," by Patricia Reagan and Rene Stulz. The author feels they made a valuable contribution to the relationship between price variability and the design of contracts. He attempts to connect the welfare aspects of price level variability with the welfare aspects of monetary policy. He suggests future research build upon the work by Reagan and Stulz by studying the general equilibrium implications of contract design.

The authors use primary data to empirically test several hypotheses about business format franchising on the basis of the theoretical model presented in Lal (1990). They find support for the hypothesis that royalty rate balances the incentives to the franchisor to invest in brand name with those to the franchisees to invest in retail service. Also consistent with the mixed strategy equilibrium, the authors find that royalty rate positively affects monitoring frequency, and that monitoring costs negatively affect service level. However, contrary to the theory, the authors find that monitoring costs inversely affect monitoring frequency among franchisers. They analytically extend Lal's model to incorporate heterogeneity in monitoring costs among franchisees belonging to the same franchiser and find strong empirical support for the hypothesis that monitoring costs inversely affect monitoring frequency within a franchise system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses information pertaining to industrial leasing. A lease is a contract by which the owner of an asset grants the right to use the asset for a given term to another party in return for a periodic payment of rent. Leases can be grouped into the categories of financial and operating. Leases are often seen as tools for broadening a company's products and services offerings and as an expansion for profit opportunities. An economic advantage of leasing will result if the lessor is capable of "underpricing" alternative debt capital suppliers, such as banks.

Many firms face bidding situations in which follow-on contracts are likely, and the firm winning the initial contract is favored to win the follow-on awards. Managers are tempted to bid the initial contract low in anticipation of receiving the lucrative follow-on contract, but quantitative analysis of these situations can be difficult. A technique is presented herein where the expected present value of the margin of the follow-on contract is added to the present value of the margin of the initial contract to achieve an overall expected margin sufficient to meet the management's minimum target ROI levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sales managers of building products selling to new construction often ask: How can sales be related to market potential? How can market penetration be determined? How can more realistic sales goals be established? Here is a simplified statistical answer to these questions, based on construction-contracts activity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: To examine the characteristics of voluntary online commitment contracts that may be associated with greater weight loss.Design: Retrospective analysis of weight loss commitment contracts derived from a company that provides web-based support for personal commitment contracts. Using regression, we analyzed whether percentage weight loss differed between participants who incentivized their contract using monetary deposits and those who did not.Setting: Online.Participants: Users (N = 3857) who voluntarily signed up online in 2013 for a weight loss contract.Intervention: Participants specified their own weight loss goal, time period, and self-reported weekly weight. Deposits were available in the following 3 categories: charity, anticharity (a nonprofit one does not like), or donations made to a friend.Measures: Percentage weight loss per week.Analysis: Multivariable linear regressions.Results: Controlling for several participant and contract characteristics, contracts with anticharity, charity, and friend deposits had greater reported weight loss than nonincentivized contracts. Weight change per week relative to those without deposits was -0.33%, -0.28%, and -0.25% for anti-charity, charity, and friend, respectively ( P < 0.001). Contracts without a weight verification method claimed more weight loss than those with verification.Conclusion: Voluntary use of commitment contracts may be an effective tool to assist weight loss. Those who choose to use monetary incentives report more weight loss. It is not clear whether this is due to the incentives or higher motivation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We analyze a game-theoretic model of a risk-sharing agreement between a payer and a pharmaceutical firm. The drug manufacturer chooses the price while the payer sets the rebate rate and decides which patients are eligible for treatment. The manufacturer provides the payer with a rebate for nonresponding patients. We generalize on the existing literature, by making both price and rebate rate decision variables, allowing the rebate rate to be different from 100%, and incorporating 2 types of administrative costs. We identify a threshold for the expected probability of response for classifying the drug as a mass-market or niche type and investigate the optimal solutions for both types. We also identify a threshold for the rebate rate at which the net benefits become equal for responding and nonresponding patients. Through numerical examples, we examine how various parameters impact the drug manufacturer's and the payer's optimal solution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigate whether incentive schemes signal social norms and thus affect behavior beyond their direct economic consequences. A one-shot principal-agent experiment is studied where prior to contract choice principals are informed about the past actions of other agents and thus have more information about norms of behavior. Compared with a setting in which principals are uninformed, agents exert substantially higher effort under a fixed wage contract when they are aware that an informed principal chose this contract. The informed principal's choice apparently signals a norm not to exploit trust, which leads to more trustworthy behavior. This mechanism's robustness is explored in further experiments. Data, as supplemental material, are available at . This paper was accepted by Uri Gneezy, behavioral economics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information on the study of outcome of Regional Forest Agreements (RFAs) held between Australia State and Commonwealth governments from 1997-2001 for the conservation and sustainable management of Australia's native forests. Topics discussed include views on environmental and economic aims of RFAs; negative results of RFAs involves vertebrate species declines, timber overharvesting, and forest instability; and introduction of legislations regarding RFAs.

Long-term contracting implies contracting based on expected future demand. In this paper, I develop a multiperiod procurement model where, once the actual level of demand is realized, the irreversible initial provision level may be supplemented by additional provisions. This paper shows that, with the possibility of additional upward adjustments, the first-period provision level will be lower than when no additional adjustments are possible. This reduction in first-period provision level is higher under complete contracting than under incomplete contracting, and because of the reduction in information rents it yields a higher expected utility to the principal but lower total welfare. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Health Policy & Planning is the property of Oxford University Press / USA and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article presents a study on the Economic Analysis of Contract and the implications of social function in international trade, in order to analyze the correlation of Economic Analysis of Contract and the social function of the contract under international contacts. This study presents considerations on the Economic Analysis of Law, demonstrating the rationale for their use in the Brazilian legal system, and also the implications of the social function of the contract in international contacts. We intend to analyze more thoroughly the new legal approach to international contractual relationship, since changes were operated in order to enrich the legal relations, showing what are the means to effect compliance with contractual clauses bringing some security to foreign investment. Finally, reflect on the functions performed by the EDA and social function and their legal consequences internationally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The competitiveness of the agricultural enterprises from the Republic of Moldova depends on the state regulation of this sector. During many years beginning with obtaining the independece of the Republic of Moldova till now, there were elaborated many laws, signed several agreements of trade cooperation between Republic of Moldova and many countries, which became economic partners of the Republic of Moldova, all of these influencing the competitiveness of the agricultural enterprises. In this scientific paper is analyzed the regulatory framework of competitiveness regulation of the agricultural sector of the Republic of Moldova, which is very vulnerable in front of the negative influence of instability factors, determining the necessity of state regulation of this sector. The scientific research is based on the data from the Ministry of Agriculture and Food Industry of the Republic of Moldova, Parliament of the Republic of Moldova and other economic literature from the analyzed domain of study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates relational incentive contracts with continuous, privately observed agent types that are persistent over time. With fixed agent types, full separation is not possible when continuation equilibrium payoffs following revelation are on the Pareto frontier of attainable payoffs. This result is related to the ratchet effect in that: (1) a type imitating a less productive type receives an information rent, and (2) with full separation, one imitating a more productive type receives the same future payoff as that more productive type. However, the reason for (2) is fundamentally different than with the ratchet effect. It arises from the dynamic enforcement requirement in relational contracts, not from the principal having all the bargaining power, and applies whatever the distribution between principal and agent of the future gains from the relationship (i.e., whatever the point on the Pareto frontier). This result extends to sufficiently persistent types under certain conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A prospect theory model combining loss aversion and diminishing sensitivity predicts that the link between incentives framing and effort is ambiguous: small penalties yield higher effort, but isomorphic contracts with large penalties decrease effort. We conduct two experiments (a framed field and a conventional lab experiment) in which economically equivalent contracts are framed as menus of either (i) bonuses, (ii) penalties, or (iii) bonuses and penalties. The experimental results confirm the main intuition of the model as subjects performed best when bonuses and penalties are combined. A follow-up lottery experiment confirms that both loss aversion and diminishing sensitivity influenced the performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article deliberates on the Islamic contracts used in absolute assignment in takāful industry and identifies Sharī'ah issues that might accrue from it. The article studies the market practice of absolute assignment in takāful industry in Malaysia and proposes the adequate Islamic contracts that can be used in absolute assignment and at the same time resolve any Sharī'ah issues that might occur from it. This research consists of both library-based research and fieldwork research. The researchers interviewed some practitioners and studied the related documents and acts used in executing absolute assignment in takāful industry in Malaysia. The study infers that there are two types of absolute assignments. The first one is between an individual to an individual on the basis of hibah and the second one is between an individual and a financier/bank on the basis of kafālah. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article covers the main evolutions of the insurance market in the world. This article presents the main evolutions of insurance market in Europe and in Romania. Insurance and reinsurance operations are carried out in a regulated framework that brings together supply and demand of insurance, known as insurance market framework. The insurance market takes place vast majority of specific contracts. Almost all activities of social life and the world economy are protected by insurance, given the scale and diversity shows that insurance is of great diversity and heterogeneity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An important contributor to cost overruns of infrastructure projects is contract changes after the construction contract has been concluded. Using mainly descriptive statistics and non-parametric tests, real project data were analyzed from forty-five Dutch transportation infrastructure projects with a total construction contract value of over € 8.5 billion. First it was explored if we could find evidence for the presumption that contractors bid low on contracts to recover the loss of bid profit by claiming contract change costs in the project implementation. We conclude that we could not find evidence for the opportunistic behavior of contractors. Second, the different sizes and reasons for the contract changes were explored. We conclude that: scope changes are the most significant reason for contract changes, followed by technical necessities; smaller projects tend to have higher relative contract change costs; and contract changes due to omissions in the contract are more present in smaller projects than in larger projects. The results of the analysis suggest among other things that policymakers and planners should pay more attention to flexible contracting, and to the contract management of smaller projects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Real-world financial contracts are sometimes so complex that it can be difficult to understand their exact payoff consequences. We develop and test a theoretical model of a venture capitalist ( VC) negotiating with an entrepreneur who may overweigh or underweigh the payoff consequences of contractual downside protection (DP). A lawyer with expertise in venture capital can inform the entrepreneur about these consequences, but less expert (but otherwise high quality) lawyers cannot. We determine how a VC's decision to include DP is affected by the expected quality of the entrepreneur's project, the entrepreneur's experience, and the VC expertise of his/her legal counsel. We show that the VC's incentive to include unnecessary DP declines in expected project quality. Indeed, for inexperienced entrepreneurs involved with high-quality projects, VCs prefer that the entrepreneur's counsel has VC expertise. This implies that, when negotiating with inexperienced entrepreneurs, VCs who invest in high-quality companies should be more likely to negotiate with entrepreneurs who employ lawyers with VC expertise. We document broad empirical support for the model, and provide evidence against competing explanations. (JEL L24, G24, K12, L14, L24) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Economists have long attributed the existence of firms to their ability to exercise authority through a hierarchy. Superiors can command subordinates through fiat and, in so doing, avoid the negotiation and haggling costs that come with the use of contracts. Yet the body that wields ultimate authority in the firm, the board of directors, exercises relatively little of its plenary authority to run the corporation. Boards typically make only a handful of decisions, they meet only a few times a year, and many directors have a full-time job doing something else. This Article asks why boards put such sharp limits on their day-to-day involvement with the companies they control when the exercise of authority is so central to the existence of firms. To answer this question, this Article draws on recent developments in the theory of the firm. This work examines how firms are likely to allocate authority among different constituencies, and it identifies the dangers associated with intrafirm lobbying. If the people who care most about a decision do not have the power to make that decision, they may exert substantial effort trying to influence those choices. This Article argues that this intrafirm dynamic can help to explain why boards circumscribe their authority. If directors try to exert too much authority, managers may spend too much of their time trying to influence the board rather than devoting effort to more productive tasks. This theory suggests that the scope of authority the board exercises will depend, in part, on a tradeoff between the minimization of agency costs and lobbying costs. This Article argues that this conception of the board's role helps to understand why the movement to make boards more independent has not been a uniform success and why corporate law takes a unique approach to the regulation of agency costs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examined the consequences of contractual or ownership relationships between hospitals and physician practices, often described as vertical integration. Such integration can reduce health spending and increase the quality of care by improving communication across care settings, but it can also increase providers' market power and facilitate the payment of what are effectively kickbacks for inappropriate referrals. We investigated the impact of vertical integration on hospital prices, volumes (admissions), and spending for privately insured patients. Using hospital claims from Truven Analytics MarketScan for the nonelderly privately insured in the period 2001-07, we constructed county-level indices of prices, volumes, and spending and adjusted them for enrollees' age and sex. We measured hospital-physician integration using information from the American Hospital Association on the types of relationships hospitals have with physicians. We found that an increase in the market share of hospitals with the tightest vertically integrated relationship with physicians-ownership of physician practices-was associated with higher hospital prices and spending. We found that an increase in contractual integration reduced the frequency of hospital admissions, but this effect was relatively small. Taken together, our results provide a mixed, although somewhat negative, picture of vertical integration from the perspective of the privately insured. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the trust issue in a two-echelon supply chain information sharing process. In a supply chain, the retailer reports the forecasteddemand to the supplier. Traditionally, the supplier's trust in the retailer's reportedinformationisbasedon the retailer's reputation. However, this paper considers that trust is random and is also affected by the reputation and the demand gap. The supplier and retailer have been shown to have different evaluations regarding the degree of trust. Furthermore, distrust is inherently linked to perceived risk. To mitigate perceived risk, a two-stage decision process with an unpayback deposit contract is proposed. At the first stage, the supplier and the retailer negotiate the deposit contract. At the second stage, a Stackelberg game is used to determine the retailer's reported demand and the supplier's production quantity.We show that the deposits from the retailer's and supplier's perspectives are different.When the retailer's reported demand is equal to the supplier's forecasted demand, the retailer's evaluation of the deposit is more than that of supplier's. When the retailer's reported demand is equal to the retailer's forecasted demand, the deposit from the retailer's perspective is at the lowest level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine the power of incentives in bureaucracies by studying contracts offered by a bureaucrat to her agent. The bureaucrat operates under a fixed budget, optimally chosen by a funding authority, and she can engage in policy drift, which we define as inversely related to her intrinsic motivation. Interaction between a fixed budget and policy drift results in low-powered incentives. We discuss how the bureaucrat may benefit from stricter accountability as it leads to larger budgets. Low-powered incentives remain even in an alternative centralized setting, where the funding authority contracts directly with the agent using the bureaucrat to monitor output. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Economics / Ekonomia is the property of Uniwersytet Ekonomiczny we Wroclawiu and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Recent legislation passed in March 2012 in the State of Utah--the "Transfer of Public Lands Act and Related Study," ("TPLA") also commonly referred to as House Bill 148 ("H.B. 148")--has demanded that the federal government, by December 31, 2014, "extinguish title" to certain public lands that the federal government currently holds (totaling an estimated more than 20 million acres). It also calls for the transfer of such acreage to the State and establishes procedures for the development of a management regime for this increased state portfolio of land holdings resulting from the transfer. The State of Utah claims that the federal government made promises to it (at statehood when the federal government obtained the lands) that the federal ownership would be of limited duration and that the bulk of those lands would be timely disposed of by the federal government into private ownership or otherwise returned to the State. Longstanding precedents support the theory that Utah's Enabling Act is a bilateral compact between the State and the federal government that should be treated like it is, and interpreted as, a binding contractual agreement. Utah's TPLA presents fascinating issues for the areas of public lands, natural resources, federalism, contracts, and constitutional law. It represents a new chapter in the long book of wrangling between states in the West and the federal government over natural resources and public lands ownership, control and management. The impact is potentially considerable--thirty-one percent of our nation's lands are owned by the federal government, and 63.9% of the lands in Utah are owned by the federal government. This Article provides an overview of the legal arguments on both sides of the TPLA debate. In the end, there is a credible case that rules of construction favor an interpretation of the Utah Enabling Act that includes some form of a duty to dispose on the part of the federal government. At a minimum, the legal arguments in favor of the TPLA are serious and, if taken seriously, the TPLA presents an opportunity for further clarification of public lands law and the relationship between the states and the federal government regarding those lands. Moreover, other states are exploring similar avenues to assert their claims vis-à-vis the federal government and are in various stages of developing land transfer strategies that will model or learn from the TPLA. That fact further underscores the need for a renewed serious and informed legal discussion on the issues related to disposal obligations of the federal government. This Article takes a first step into that discussion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We study two-player contests in which each player hires a delegate, and the delegates decide endogenously when to expend their effort. First, we look closely at the delegates' decisions on when to expend their effort, given contracts between the players and the delegates, and look at the players' decisions on their contracts. Then, we compare the outcomes of the endogenous-timing framework with those of the simultaneous-move framework. We show that the higher-valuation player offers her delegate greater contingent compensation than her opponent, the delegate of the higher-valuation player chooses his effort level after observing his counterpart's, the equilibrium expected payoff of the delegate of the higher-valuation player is greater than that of his counterpart, and economic rent for each delegate exists. We show that, in the endogenous-timing framework, each player offers her delegate better contingent compensation, each delegate's expected payoff is greater, and each player's expected payoff is smaller, as compared with the simultaneous-move framework. (JEL D72 ) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most of the incomplete contracting literature assumes courts of law perfectly distinguish verifiable from nonverifiable variables and that only claims related to the former can be brought to courts. We consider a more realistic enforcement technology: Parties are able to sign “vague contracts” and, by spending resources on litigation, get the court to hear and rule on cases even if they have bogus grounds and/or the claim is related to nonverifiable variables. We reexamine the results obtained in the literature on contractual solutions to the hold-up problem. In contrast to Che and Hausch (1999 “Cooperative Investment and the Value of Contracting,” 89 American Economic Review 125–47.), we find that a simple contract can be valuable and even the first-best might be achievable in the cooperative investment case. For the case of selfish investment, the efficient result of Edlin and Reichelstein (1996 “Holdups, Standard Breach Remedies, and Optimal Investment,” 86 American Economic Review, 478–501.) does not hold in general if attention is restricted to simple contracts. Our model predicts that, if allowed to do so, the parties will—by choosing the appropriate contract—manipulate the litigation costs and court rulings in opposite directions, depending on the nature of investment. (JEL: D20, D78, K10, K40, L22) [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Firms operating on production linkages through vertical integration with other firms are generally expected to possess a secured market for their output and better accessibility to inputs. We test the hypothesis whether or not the informal firms operating on contracts with formal firms/agencies/contractors are more efficient in terms of technical efficiency vis-à-vis other firms. To test the hypothesis, the paper analyzes the efficiency performance of the informal enterprises in India across enterprises of two states (selected on the basis of level of development) using two stage Data Envelopment Analysis technique. The paper uses the large sample enterprise level data of National Sample Survey Organisation. It is observed that in the developed state (Delhi) firms on contracts are less efficient, while they are more efficient in the less developed state (Orissa). The results further reveal that enforcement of regulations makes the firms more inefficient. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights: [•] We reveal how rail managers perceive their transactions as opposed to pure transaction cost theory. [•] Asset specificity is less of a cause of rail transaction costs than suggested in previous literature. [•] Co-ordination and contractual issues related to timetabling and operations key to transaction costs. [•] Good relationships are indicated as the most important contributor to making rail systems work. [•] The rail holding company model simplifies transactions but also creates greater uncertainty. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This paper compares the definitions, practices, and legal constraints on labour in Britain, France, Mauritius, and Reunion Island in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It argues that the way in which indentured labour was defined and practised in the colonies was linked to the definition and practice of wage labour in Europe and that their development was interconnected. The types of bondage that existed in the colonies were extreme forms of the notion, practices, and rules of labour in Europe. It would have been impossible to develop the indenture contract in the British and French empires if wage earners in Britain and France had not been servants. The conceptions and practices of labour in Europe and its main colonies influenced each other and were part of a global dynamic. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Many durable products with relatively short selling seasons have been using returns policies between manufacturers and retailers as the contractual protocol for some time. Recently, these sectors have witnessed the growing popularity of peer-to-peer Web-based used goods markets as important transaction channels between buyers and sellers. Given that these two issues are critically linked from both supply and demand perspectives, in this paper we study the role that consumer valuation of used products plays in shaping a manufacturer's incentive to offer a returns policy option to a retailer when used goods might be devalued compared to new ones as a result of physical deterioration (or obsolescence). We do so through a two-period dyadic channel framework where the retailer faces uncertain demand for a durable product from a renewable set of customers who are impatient but forward looking. The manufacturer, on the other hand, needs to decide whether or not to offer a returns contract to the retailer. We first characterize the necessary and sufficient condition under which returns contract is the equilibrium strategy as well as the corresponding channel decisions. Further analysis of this condition reveals that a higher consumer valuation of used products increases the likelihood of a returns contract being the equilibrium strategy. This result seems to be robust except when the potential demands for the two periods are quite deterministic and uncorrelated. However, it contradicts the burgeoning managerial trend to replace returns contracts with price-only ones in sectors where used goods are valued relatively highly by the consumers. We also discuss how used goods markets affect the equilibrium channel decisions as well as how demand uncertainty and logistics costs associated with returns influence the equilibrium contracting strategy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]