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Contract, Mechanism Design, and Technological Detail
Author(s) -
Watson Joel
Publication year - 2007
Publication title -
econometrica
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 16.7
H-Index - 199
eISSN - 1468-0262
pISSN - 0012-9682
DOI - 10.1111/j.1468-0262.2007.00732.x
Subject(s) - enforcement , mechanism design , mechanism (biology) , microeconomics , economics , state (computer science) , game theory , industrial organization , contract theory , complete information , business , computer science , political science , philosophy , epistemology , algorithm , law
This paper develops a theoretical framework for studying contract and enforcement in settings with nondurable trading opportunities and complete but unverifiable information. The framework explicitly accounts for the parties' individual trade actions. The sets of implementable state‐contingent payoffs, under various assumptions about renegotiation opportunities, are characterized and compared. The results indicate the benefit of modeling trade actions as individual, rather than as public, and they highlight the usefulness of a structured game‐theoretic framework for applied research.