Contracts and technology adoption

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Acemoglu, Daron; Antras, Pol; Helpman, Elhanan
• 署名单位: Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT); National Bureau of Economic Research; Center for Economic & Policy Research (CEPR); Harvard University; National Bureau of Economic Research
• 刊物名称: AMERICAN ECONOMIC REVIEW
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0002-8282
• DOI: 10.1257/aer.97.3.916
• 发表日期: 2007
• 页码: 916-943
• 关键词: Organizational design; COSTS; FIRMS; OWNERSHIP; economies; countries; CHOICE; scale; TRADE

摘要

We develop a tractable framework for the analysis of the relationship between contractual incompleteness, technological complementarities, and technology adoption. In our model, a firm chooses its technology and investment levels in contractible activities by suppliers of intermediate inputs. Suppliers then choose investments in noncontractible activities, anticipating payoffs from an ex post bargaining game. We show that greater contractual incompleteness leads to the adoption of less advanced technologies, and that the impact of contractual incompleteness is more pronounced when there is greater complementary among the intermediate inputs. We study a number of applications of the main framework and show that the mechanism proposed in the paper can generate sizable productivity differences across countries with different contracting institutions, and that differences in contracting institutions lead to endogenous comparative advantage differences.