Contract Theory

Contract Theory
Author: Patrick Bolton
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 746
Release: 2004-12-10
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9780262025768

A comprehensive introduction to contract theory, emphasizing common themes and methodologies as well as applications in key areas. Despite the vast research literature on topics relating to contract theory, only a few of the field's core ideas are covered in microeconomics textbooks. This long-awaited book fills the need for a comprehensive textbook on contract theory suitable for use at the graduate and advanced undergraduate levels. It covers the areas of agency theory, information economics, and organization theory, highlighting common themes and methodologies and presenting the main ideas in an accessible way. It also presents many applications in all areas of economics, especially labor economics, industrial organization, and corporate finance. The book emphasizes applications rather than general theorems while providing self-contained, intuitive treatment of the simple models analyzed. In this way, it can also serve as a reference for researchers interested in building contract-theoretic models in applied contexts.The book covers all the major topics in contract theory taught in most graduate courses. It begins by discussing such basic ideas in incentive and information theory as screening, signaling, and moral hazard. Subsequent sections treat multilateral contracting with private information or hidden actions, covering auction theory, bilateral trade under private information, and the theory of the internal organization of firms; long-term contracts with private information or hidden actions; and incomplete contracts, the theory of ownership and control, and contracting with externalities. Each chapter ends with a guide to the relevant literature. Exercises appear in a separate chapter at the end of the book.

Social Contract Theory for a Diverse World

Social Contract Theory for a Diverse World
Author: Ryan Muldoon
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 143
Release: 2016-10-14
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1134793545

Very diverse societies pose real problems for Rawlsian models of public reason. This is for two reasons: first, public reason is unable accommodate diverse perspectives in determining a regulative ideal. Second, regulative ideals are unable to respond to social change. While models based on public reason focus on the justification of principles, this book suggests that we need to orient our normative theories more toward discovery and experimentation. The book develops a unique approach to social contract theory that focuses on diverse perspectives. It offers a new moral stance that author Ryan Muldoon calls, "The View From Everywhere," which allows for substantive, fundamental moral disagreement. This stance is used to develop a bargaining model in which agents can cooperate despite seeing different perspectives. Rather than arguing for an ideal contract or particular principles of justice, Muldoon outlines a procedure for iterated revisions to the rules of a social contract. It expands Mill's conception of experiments in living to help form a foundational principle for social contract theory. By embracing this kind of experimentation, we move away from a conception of justice as an end state, and toward a conception of justice as a trajectory. Listen to Robert Talisse interview Ryan Muldoon about Social Contract Theory for a Diverse World on the podcast, New Books in Philosophy: http://tinyurl.com/j9oq324 Also, read Ryan Muldoon’s related Niskanen Center article, "Diversity and Disagreement are the Solution, Not the Problem," published Jan. 10, 2017: https://niskanencenter.org/blog/diversity-disagreement-solution-not-problem/

Contract Theory in Continuous-Time Models

Contract Theory in Continuous-Time Models
Author: Jakša Cvitanic
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 258
Release: 2012-09-26
Genre: Mathematics
ISBN: 3642141994

In recent years there has been a significant increase of interest in continuous-time Principal-Agent models, or contract theory, and their applications. Continuous-time models provide a powerful and elegant framework for solving stochastic optimization problems of finding the optimal contracts between two parties, under various assumptions on the information they have access to, and the effect they have on the underlying "profit/loss" values. This monograph surveys recent results of the theory in a systematic way, using the approach of the so-called Stochastic Maximum Principle, in models driven by Brownian Motion. Optimal contracts are characterized via a system of Forward-Backward Stochastic Differential Equations. In a number of interesting special cases these can be solved explicitly, enabling derivation of many qualitative economic conclusions.

Advances in Economic Theory

Advances in Economic Theory
Author: Truman Fassett Bewley
Publisher: CUP Archive
Total Pages: 452
Release: 1989-07-28
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9780521389259

These articles should be helpful to anyone with training in economics.

The Choice Theory of Contracts

The Choice Theory of Contracts
Author: Hanoch Dagan
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 195
Release: 2017-04-17
Genre: Law
ISBN: 1107135982

The Choice Theory of Contracts is an engaging landmark that shows, for the first time, how freedom matters to contract.

Contract Theory

Contract Theory
Author: Stephen A. Smith
Publisher: OUP Oxford
Total Pages: 480
Release: 2004-03-25
Genre: Law
ISBN: 0191018813

This book is both an examination of, and a contribution to, our understanding of the theoretical foundations of the common law of contract. Focusing on contemporary debates in contract theory, Contract Theory aims to help readers better understand the nature and justification of the general idea of contractual obligation, as well as the nature and justification of the particular rules that make up the law of contract. The book is in three parts. Part I introduces the idea of 'contract theory', and presents a framework for identifying, classifying, and evaluating contract theories. Part II describes and evaluates the most important general theories of contract; examples include promissory theories, reliance-based theories, and economic theories. In Part III, the theoretical issues raised by the various specific doctrines that make up the law of contract (e.g., offer and acceptance, consideration, mistake, remedies, etc.) are examined in separate chapters. The legal focus of the book is the common law of the United Kingdom, but the theoretical literature discussed is international in origin; the arguments discussed are thus relevant to understanding the law of other common law jurisdictions and, in many instances, to understanding the law of civil law jurisdictions as well.

Justice in Transactions

Justice in Transactions
Author: Peter Benson
Publisher: Belknap Press
Total Pages: 625
Release: 2019-12-17
Genre: Law
ISBN: 0674237595

“One of the most important contributions to the field of contract theory—if not the most important—in the past 25 years.” —Stephen A. Smith, McGill University Can we account for contract law on a moral basis that is acceptable from the standpoint of liberal justice? To answer this question, Peter Benson develops a theory of contract that is completely independent of—and arguably superior to—long-dominant views, which take contract law to be justified on the basis of economics or promissory morality. Through a detailed analysis of contract principles and doctrines, Benson brings out the specific normative conception underpinning the whole of contract law. Contract, he argues, is best explained as a transfer of rights, which is complete at the moment of agreement and is governed by a definite conception of justice—justice in transactions. Benson’s analysis provides what John Rawls called a public basis of justification, which is as essential to the liberal legitimacy of contract as to any other form of coercive law. The argument of Justice in Transactions is expressly complementary to Rawls’s, presenting an original justification designed specifically for transactions, as distinguished from the background institutions to which Rawls’s own theory applies. The result is a field-defining work offering a comprehensive theory of contract law. Benson shows that contract law is both justified in its own right and fully congruent with other domains—moral, economic, and political—of liberal society.

Contract Theory in Historical Context

Contract Theory in Historical Context
Author: Deborah Baumgold
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 209
Release: 2010
Genre: Literary Collections
ISBN: 9004184252

These essays carefully show that classic social-contract theory was an ancien regime genre. Far more than is commonly realized, the local horizon was built into Hobbes s and Locke s theories and the genre drew on the absolutism of Bodin and Grotius.

Social Contract Theory in American Jurisprudence

Social Contract Theory in American Jurisprudence
Author: Thomas R. Pope
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 134
Release: 2013-06-07
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1135935327

Despite decades of attempts and the best intentions of its members, the United States Supreme Court has failed to develop a coherent jurisprudence regarding the state’s proper relationship to the individual. Without some objective standard upon which to ground jurisprudence, decisions have moved along a spectrum between freedom and authority and back again, affecting issues as diverse as individual contractual liberties and the right to privacy. Social Contract Theory in American Jurisprudence seeks to reintroduce the lessons of modern political philosophy to offer a solution for this variable application of legal principle and to lay the groundwork for a jurisprudence consistent in both theory and practice. Thomas R. Pope’s argument examines two exemplary court cases, Lochner v. New York and West Coast Hotel v. Parrish, and demonstrates how the results of these cases failed to achieve the necessary balance of liberty and the public good because they considered the matter in terms of a dichotomy. Pope explores our constitution’s roots in social contract theory, looking particularly to the ideas of Thomas Hobbes for a jurisprudence that is consistent with the language and tradition of the Constitution, and that is also more effectually viable than existing alternatives. Pope concludes with an examination of recent cases before the Court, grounding his observations firmly within the developments of ongoing negotiation of jurisprudence. Addressing the current debate between individual liberty and government responsibility within the context of contemporary jurisprudence, Pope considers the implications of a Hobbesian founding for modern policy. This book will be particularly relevant to scholars of Constitutional Law, the American Founding, and Modern Political Theory.