1 论文标题:Contracts as Reference Points?Experimental Evidence

2 作者信息:Ernst Fehr, Oliver Hart, and Christian Zehnder

3 出处和链接：American Economic Review 101 (April 2011): 493-525 http://www.aeaweb.org/articles.php7doi?10.1257/aer.l01.2.493

4 摘要：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 ref? erence 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 con? tracts 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 out? comes within the contract. (JEL D44, D86, J41)