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Courts’ Decisions, Cooperative Investments, and Incomplete Contracts

Alessandro De Chiara

Journal of Legal Studies2025https://doi.org/10.1086/730424article
AJG 3
Weight
0.37

What the paper says

Buyers may try to motivate their sellers to make relationship-specific investments to reduce the probability that the design of the goods they procure is defective. In some countries, courts examine how much real authority the seller had in performing the work in their assignment of liability for a design failure. I show that the approach followed by courts induces the sellers to underinvest and the buyers to underspecify the design of the goods. I explore efficiency-based justifications for this approach, such as the facilitation of optimal relational contracting and the provision of incentives to engage in noncontractible coordinating activities.

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https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1086/730424

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@article{alessandro2025,
  title        = {{Courts’ Decisions, Cooperative Investments, and Incomplete Contracts}},
  author       = {Alessandro De Chiara},
  journal      = {Journal of Legal Studies},
  year         = {2025},
  doi          = {https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1086/730424},
}

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Courts’ Decisions, Cooperative Investments, and Incomplete Contracts

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Evidence weight

0.37

Balanced mode · F 0.40 / M 0.15 / V 0.05 / R 0.40

F · citation impact0.16 × 0.4 = 0.06
M · momentum0.53 × 0.15 = 0.08
V · venue signal0.50 × 0.05 = 0.03
R · text relevance †0.50 × 0.4 = 0.20

† Text relevance is estimated at 0.50 on the detail page — for your query’s actual relevance score, open this paper from a search result.