Incomplete Contracts and the Theory of the Firm: What Have We Learned over the Past 25 Years?

摘要

In this essay, we have focused attention on theoretical debates around the incomplete contracts/property rights approach, but we would be remiss not to add that this theory has also spurred an empirical literature on firms' boundaries and organization. For example, Grossman and Hart (1986) predict underinvestment by parties that do not have ownership (and hence residual control rights). Acemoglu, Aghion, Griffith, and Zilibotti (2010) use U.K. firm-level panel data and input-output information about U.K. firms to show that more vertically integrated firms—firms that produce a higher fraction of their inputs in-house—also display higher R&D investment by final producers and lower R&D investment by supplying industries.