The paper examines the theoretical foundations of the hold–up problem. At a first stage, one agent decides on the level of a relationship– specific investment. There is no contract, so at a second stage the agent must bargain with a trading partner over the surplus that the investment has generated. We show that the conventional underinvestment result hinges crucially both on the assumed bargai...

The performance of a forced-liquid Vertical Tubular Loop Bioreactor (VTLB), a forced-liquid Horizontal Tubular Loop Bioreactor (HTLB) and a gas-induced External Airlift Loop Bioreactor (EALB) were compared for production of biomass from natural gas. Hydrodynamic characteristics and mass transfer coefficients were determined as functions of design parameters, physical properties of gases as ...

This paper examines a contractual setting with unverifiable investment and a durable trading opportunity, in which trade can take place in any one of an infinite number of periods. The contractual setting features cross-investment, meaning that the seller’s investment affects the buyer’s benefit of trade. Two different trade technologies are studied, one in which the seller has the individual a...

We study a two person bargaining problem in which the buyer may invest and increase his valuation of the object before bargaining. We show that if all offers are made by the seller and the time between offers is small, then the buyer invests efficiently and the seller extracts all of the surplus. Hence, bargaining with frequently repeated offers remedies the hold-up problem even when the agent ...

Standard setting raises a variety of antitrust issues. Cooperative standard setting often involves horizontal competitors agreeing on certain specifications of the products they plan to market, implicating core antitrust issues regarding the boundary between cooperation and collusion. The American Bar Association’s Handbook on the Antitrust Aspects of Standards Setting presents legal analysis o...

Hold-up risks can be mitigated by creating asymmetric information about the investment using information control. In this paper, we study the investment level and welfare achievable with information control and the information structure that implements them. Our main result identifies a separation between information that creates ex-ante investment incentive and information that causes ex-post ...

Vertical integration is often proposed as a way to resolve hold-up problems, ignoring the empirical fact that division managers tend to maximize divisional (not firmwide) profit when investing. This paper develops a model with asymmetric information at the bargaining stage and investment returns taking the form of cash and “empire benefits.” Owners of a vertically integrated firm then will prov...