Abstract
Several recent papers argue that contracts provide reference points that affect ex post behavior. We test this hypothesis in a canonical buyer-seller relationship with renegotiation. Our paper provides causal experimental evidence that an initial contract has a highly significant and economically important impact on renegotiation behavior that goes beyond the effect of contracts on bargaining threatpoints. We compare situations in which an initial contract is renegotiated to strategically equivalent bargaining situations in which no ex ante contract was written. The ex ante contract causes sellers to ask for markups that are 45 percent lower than in strategically equivalent bargaining situations without an initial contract. Moreover, buyers are more likely to reject given markups in renegotiations than in negotiations. We do not find that these effects are stronger when the initial contract is concluded under competitive rather than monopolistic conditions.
Dokumententyp: | Paper |
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Publikationsform: | Preprint |
Keywords: | renegotiation, bargaining, reference points, contracts, competition |
Fakultät: | Sonderforschungsbereiche > Discussion Paper Series of SFB/TR 15 Governance and the Efficiency of Economic Systems
Sonderforschungsbereiche > Discussion Paper Series of SFB/TR 15 Governance and the Efficiency of Economic Systems > A4 - Unvollständige Verträge, Marktinteraktion und soziale Vergleichsprozesse Volkswirtschaft Volkswirtschaft > Lehrstühle > Seminar für Wirtschaftstheorie |
Themengebiete: | 300 Sozialwissenschaften > 330 Wirtschaft |
JEL Classification: | C78, C91, D03, D86 |
URN: | urn:nbn:de:bvb:19-epub-13829-7 |
Sprache: | Englisch |
Dokumenten ID: | 13829 |
Datum der Veröffentlichung auf Open Access LMU: | 06. Aug. 2012, 08:05 |
Letzte Änderungen: | 04. Nov. 2020, 12:54 |
Alle Versionen dieses Dokumentes
- Reference Points in Renegotiations: The Role of Contracts and Competition. (deposited 06. Aug. 2012, 08:05) [momentan angezeigt]