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The Economic Analysis of R&D Strategies-The Mechanism Design of Incomplete R&D Cooperative Contract

Abstract
In an ideal world, the agents would write a contingent contract specifying exactly which outcome is to be implemented in each state. However, the bounded rationality, the contracting agents may be unable to define ex ante the contingencies, and the transaction costs, the costs result from the difficulty of foreseeing contingencies, writing and enforcing contract, will lead to R&D cooperative contracts incomplete essentially.
When R&D cooperative contracts are incomplete, the contracting agents face the hazard of ex post opportunistic behavior: each agent may engage in inefficient R&D investment in an attempt to ¡§hold up¡¨ other agents and to obtain a large share of the available quasi-rents. The purposes of this dissertation are to show that the mechanism design to the hold-up problem may implement in incomplete R&D cooperative contracts.
In chapter II, we assume that the agents commit not to renegotiate ex post and set up a sequential mechanism. Under this sequential mechanism, the seller (university) sends massages (seller¡¦s true type) to the buyer (firm) who receives the massages and decides whether he will challenge them. The monetary transfer from the buyer to the seller and the quality of trade are the function of agents¡¦ true type. The great merit of this mechanism is that the seller and the buyer play the subgame perfect equilibrium in which both of them announce truthfully.
We release the assumption that the contracting agents commit not to renegotiate ex post in chapter III. Under the current legal system, there is nothing to stop buyers or sellers to prevent renegotiation of their original contract. More importantly, the agents will rationally anticipate any renegotiation and this will change the equilibrium strategies of the mechanism itself.
According to proposition 3-2, we demonstrate that the direct-revelation mechanism with Rubinsteinian bargaining game induced buyer and seller both announcing honestly but the R&D investment offered by agents were lower than the first best.
To avoid the effect generated by renegotiation, some economists argued that the contract in which either buyer or seller has all the ex post bargaining power can induce efficient investment, and thus can implement the first best. This argument contrasts to Aghion and Tirole(1986), for they argued that whether the buyer or the seller should own the innovation hinged on the marginal efficiency of the buyer¡¦s investment compared with that of the seller¡¦s effort. Hence, we accept the property rights concepts proposed by Barzel(1989) and show that the agents can actually raise their payoff by using a mechanism in which performs the function analogous to the real option.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:NSYSU/oai:NSYSU:etd-1028103-124513
Date28 October 2003
CreatorsChen, Chien-Hua
Contributorsnone, none, none, Weng, J. H., Lin, S. M., Liu, T. G.
PublisherNSYSU
Source SetsNSYSU Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Archive
LanguageCholon
Detected LanguageEnglish
Typetext
Formatapplication/pdf
Sourcehttp://etd.lib.nsysu.edu.tw/ETD-db/ETD-search/view_etd?URN=etd-1028103-124513
Rightsunrestricted, Copyright information available at source archive

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