This paper endogenizes the timing of bilateral contracting between one principal and multiple agents in the presence of externalities. Contracting simultaneously with all agents is optimal for the principal if externalities become weaker the more an agent trades. If instead externalities become stronger, sequential negotiations might benefit the principal as they lower the agents’ outside optio...

This work describes a family of homomorphisms that contract natural deductions into typed ^-expressions, with the property that a convergence proof for an untyped program for function / is contracted to a typed program for /. The main novelties, compared to previous works on extracting algorithms from proofs, are the reading of deductions themselves as programs, and that instead of a constructi...

In recent years, there has been an explosive growth in the popularity of online social networks such as Facebook. In a new twist, third party developers are now able to create their own web applications which plug into Facebook and work with Facebook’s “social” data, enabling the entire Facebook user base of more than 400 million active users to use such applications. These client applications ...

I this paper, we analyze the contracting issues that arise in collaborative services, such as consulting, financial planning, and information technology outsourcing. In particular, we investigate how the choice of contract type—among fixed-fee, time-and-materials, and performance-based contracts—is driven by the service environment characteristics. We find that fixed-fee contracts contingent on...

Contracting for infrastructural maintenance has changed significantly over the last couple of decades from the wellknown ’regulatory’ contract towards more innovative and flexible agreements. Indeed these newer methods offer promising benefits: increased flexibility, better performance and consequently less cost. Nonetheless, these benefits are accompanied by higher levels of uncertainty and mo...

a International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh, Dhaka, Bangladesh. b Council on Health Research for Development, 1-5 Route des Morillons, 1211 Geneva, Switzerland. c Faculty of Medicine, Makerere University, Kampala, Uganda. Correspondence to Andrew Kennedy (e-mail: [email protected]). Funding for global health research has increased dramatically over the last 10 years1 and...

We argue that the lack of academic proficiency in K-12 education is due to information asymmetry between the policy-maker, households and schools. The policy-maker is thus unable to write down contracts that ensure proficiency, and must incur agency costs which, in turn, generate other distortions. We develop a theoretical equilibrium model where schools and households choose their efforts in r...

Heute bietet das Internet nicht nur für Großunternehmen sondern auch für kleine Unternehmen Möglichkeiten zur automatisierten Kooperation. Im Bereich des Business-to-Business-Commerce wurden jedoch bisher kleine Unternehmen aufgrund relativ hoher Transaktionskosten eher davon abgehalten, Handelstransaktionen über das Internet durchzuführen. Für solche Anwendungsbereiche wird in diesem Beitrag d...

We present a model of N-player contracting with transaction costs and endogenous property rights. Ex ante agreed surplus sharing can be altered ex post, after irreversible investments in production (characterised by the generalised Cobb-Douglas production function). The actual surplus sharing is determined ex post, after each player has chosen a costly action to alter the surplus sharing in his...