American Economic ReviewVol. 101, No. 2, April 2011

Contracts as Reference Points—Experimental Evidence

Ernst Fehr, Oliver Hart and Christian Zehnder


Fehr, Ernst, Oliver Hart, and Christian Zehnder. 2011. "Contracts as Reference Points—Experimental Evidence." American Economic Review, 101(2): 493–525.

Abstract
Hart and John Moore (2008) introduce new behavioral assumptions that can explain long-term contracts and the employment relation. We examine experimentally their idea that contracts serve as reference points. The evidence confirms the prediction that there is a trade-off between rigidity and flexibility. Flexible contracts—which would dominate rigid contracts under standard assumptions—cause significant shading in ex post performance, while under rigid contracts much less shading occurs. The experiment appears to reveal a new behavioral force: ex ante competition legitimizes the terms of a contract, and aggrievement and shading occur mainly about outcomes within the contract. (JEL D44, D86, J41)

不完全合约的老大和行为与实验经济学的大牛合著论文发在AER上了！