This setting lets you change the way you view articles. You can choose to have articles open in a dialog window, a new tab, or directly in the same window.
Open in Dialog
Open in New Tab
Open in same window
Open in New Tab
Open in same window
American Economic Review: Vol. 97 No. 3 (June 2007)
AER Volume. 97, Issue 3 | 
Previous ArticleNext Article
Sign up for Email Alerts Follow us on Twitter
AER Forthcoming Articles
Full-text Article
Previous ArticleNext Article
Expand
Quick Tools:
Print Article Summary Email Link to this Article Export CitationSign up for Email Alerts Follow us on Twitter
Explore:
AER Forthcoming Articles
Contracts and Technology Adoption
Article Citation
Acemoglu, Daron,
Pol Antràs, and
Elhanan Helpman. 2007. "Contracts and Technology Adoption."
American Economic Review,
97(3): 916-943.
DOI: 10.1257/aer.97.3.916
DOI: 10.1257/aer.97.3.916
Abstract
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.
(JEL D86, O33)
Article Full-Text Access
Full-text Article
Authors
Acemoglu, Daron
Antràs, Pol
Helpman, Elhanan
Antràs, Pol
Helpman, Elhanan
