Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-pftt2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-30T14:55:44.745Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

A Discussion of the Papers by Pierre-Andre Chiappori and Bernard Salanié and by Jean Charles Rochet and Lars A. Stole

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 January 2010

Mathias Dewatripont
Affiliation:
Université Libre de Bruxelles
Lars Peter Hansen
Affiliation:
University of Chicago
Stephen J. Turnovsky
Affiliation:
University of Washington
Get access

Summary

Each of these surveys is a “must read”: anyone who wants to analyze multi-dimensional screening models should start by reading Rochet and Stole (RS), and anyone who wants to do empirical work on contracts should begin with Chiappori and Salanié (CS). I will start this discussion (Section 1) by what I perceived to be the main message of each survey. Although the two papers are quite different in nature and in focus, they both remind us why we should be interested in contracts and organizations: when markets are incomplete or imperfect, contracts and organizations are the relevant allocation devices and are not neutral from an “efficiency” point of view. Therefore, if we want to understand the effects of economic policies, macroeconomic shocks, technological shocks on the performance of firms, or the economy, we are bound first to answer two questions.

  1. What are the effects of contractual and organizational choices on behavior and economic performance?

  2. What are the determinants of contractual choices?

RS and CS show how answers to these questions can be enhanced by theoretical and empirical work in contract theory. Reading these surveys and the literature, it seems fair to acknowledge two tendencies: first, that empirical work has been an active consumer of theory, but that theory has been a more timid consumer of empirical work and, second, that we seem to have many answers to (1), but fewer answers to (2).

Type
Chapter
Information
Advances in Economics and Econometrics
Theory and Applications, Eighth World Congress
, pp. 198 - 207
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2003

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×