This paper explores some perverse features that can emerge when social contracts are moved from a social vacuum to a setting of social interdependence. In particular we note incentives that might exist in conjunction with externality problems that yield situations in which: (1) social contracts reduce social wealth; (2) sub-global social contracts are Pareto inferior to the absence of social co...

In this paper we present an approach to check resource consumption contracts using an off-theshelf static analyzer. We propose a set of annotations to support resource usage specifications, in particular, dynamic memory consumption constraints. Since dynamic memory may be recycled by a memory manager, the consumption of this resource is not monotone. The specification language can express both ...

After entering into supply contracts, ...rms often later renegotiate the terms of those contracts. For example, ...rms that obtain market demand information after signing supply contracts may bene...t by renegotiating the contracts to allow buyers facing poor market conditions to purchase less than their contractual commitment and allowing buyers facing favorable conditions to purchase more. Co...

The capability to reallocate items|e.g. tasks, securities , bandwidth slices, Mega Watt hours of electricity , and collectibles|is a key feature in automated negotiation. Especially when agents have preferences over combinations of items, this is highly nontrivial. Marginal cost based reallocation leads to an anytime algorithm where every agent's payoo increases mono-tonically over time. Diiere...

When IAEA was established as an autonomous member of the United Nations family in 1957, a prominent assignment was to "seek to accelerate and enlarge the contribution of atomic energy to peace, health and prosperity throughout the world". The inclusion of "health" reflected an important fact — that medical uses of radiation and radionuclides were among the first and most widespread applications...

Programs should consist of off-the-shelf, interchangeable, black-box components that are produced by a network of independent software companies. These components should not only come with type signatures but also with contracts that describe other aspects of their behavior. One way to express contracts is to state preand postconditions for externally visible functions. These preand post-condit...

in an era of information technology, businesses, through the use of the boundless internet, can enter into international electronic contracts from anywhere in the world. the potential for cross-border disputes in electronic contracts is obviously much greater than in a paper-based environment, where a high degree of commercial contracts are domestic in nature. can the traditional rules on juris...

We show experimentally that fairness concerns may have a decisive impact on the actual and optimal choice of contracts in a moral hazard context. Bonus contracts that offer a voluntary and unenforceable bonus for satisfactory performance provide powerful incentives and are superior to explicit incentive contracts when there are some fair-minded players. But trust contracts that pay a generous w...

Risk theoretic analysis of capitation contracts suggests that capitation contracts are closely aligned to reinsurance contracts between insurance companies. Similarities and differences between these two forms of contractual instruments are reviewed, and several implications are discussed. Viewing capitation contracts as reinsurance contracts has implications that are incompatible with the over...

This paper analyzes optimal contracts in a linear hidden-action model with normally distributed returns possessing two moments that are governed jointly by two agents who have negative exponential utilities. They can observe and verify each others’ effort levels and draft enforceable side-contracts on effort levels and realized returns. Standard constraints, resulting in incentive contracts, fa...