BEGIN:VCALENDAR VERSION:2.0 PRODID:-//BFI - ECPv5.14.1//NONSGML v1.0//EN CALSCALE:GREGORIAN METHOD:PUBLISH X-WR-CALNAME:BFI X-ORIGINAL-URL:https://legacy.bfistage.com X-WR-CALDESC:Events for BFI REFRESH-INTERVAL;VALUE=DURATION:PT1H X-Robots-Tag:noindex X-PUBLISHED-TTL:PT1H BEGIN:VTIMEZONE TZID:America/Chicago BEGIN:DAYLIGHT TZOFFSETFROM:-0600 TZOFFSETTO:-0500 TZNAME:CDT DTSTART:20210314T080000 END:DAYLIGHT BEGIN:STANDARD TZOFFSETFROM:-0500 TZOFFSETTO:-0600 TZNAME:CST DTSTART:20211107T070000 END:STANDARD END:VTIMEZONE BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/Chicago:20210423T110000 DTEND;TZID=America/Chicago:20210424T180000 DTSTAMP:20260629T001422 CREATED:20210413T133153Z LAST-MODIFIED:20220203T184140Z UID:25769-1619175600-1619287200@legacy.bfistage.com SUMMARY:Academic Symposium | Relational Contracts: Theory and Practice DESCRIPTION:The first day will feature academics in conversations with executives from many industries exploring the contracting problems they face and novel solutions they have devised. The second day will have three panels\, one focusing on the work of each of the sets of scholars. The papers will not be presented as participants will read them in advance. Rather\, two short comments will be offered on each set of authors\, one by an economist and the other by a legal academic. The day will conclude with a discussion led by Luigi Zingales\, Tim Cummins and Chad Syverson on the implications of the proceedings for the theory of the firm. \n\nDESCRIPTION\nThe study of relational contracts began with the pioneering work of Stewart Macaulay and Ian Macneil. Although these authors eschewed economics\, the past decades have seen a burgeoning interest in the subject from both economists and legal scholars writing in the law and economics tradition. The goal of this online gathering is to further our understanding of relational contracts by bringing the business and legal people who draft\, perform\, and enforce them into a conversation with leading academics to see what theory can learn from real-world practices and what the real-world can learn from theory. \nTo focus our inquiry\, we will look at three recent perspectives on relational contracts. We will draw on them to organize a conversation that can help advance the effort (on the level of both theory and the design of research projects) to better understand the mechanisms of effective contract governance. \nThe first perspective was developed by Oliver Hart\, David Frydlinger and Kate Vitasek who put forth a new type of contract—the formal relational contract—that they view as an effective way to overcome the problems of contractual incompleteness\, particularly in complex transactions. This approach highlights the importance of aligning perspectives as well as building trust and understanding during contract negotiation. It also suggests that contracts contain a legally binding obligation to act in accordance with six contracting norms—reciprocity\, autonomy\, honesty\, integrity\, loyalty and equity—to induce the parties to respond cooperatively to the inevitable problems arising from contractual incompleteness. \nThe second perspective\, developed by Lisa Bernstein and Brad Peterson in the context of contracts between large integrated product manufactures and their suppliers of components (but present also in a number of other contexts)\, focuses on the ways that contracts between firms have come to incorporate a set of provisions—termed managerial provisions—that are analogues of the intra-firm management techniques explored in the World Management Survey. Although these managerial provisions are formal\, clear\, and detailed\, they are not meaningfully legally enforceable\, making them a species of formal relational contract\, but one quite different from that described by Hart et al. These governance a more powerful force\, and foster the growth of inter-firm and interpersonal trust. \nThe third approach was developed by Robert Gibbons and Rebecca Henderson. It looks at relational contracts within firms of different types from white collar firms to blue collar firms to salespeople on the Nordstrom floor (but the argument applies to relational contracts between firms as well as those within). Motivated by management practices that are known to be value-creating but do not diffuse to all firms that could benefit from them\, this approach focuses on the role of “clarity” (in addition to the standard game-theoretic consideration of “credibility”) in allowing parties to develop relational contracts\, suggesting that for many important relational contracts clarity cannot be instantaneously produced but instead must emerge through shared experience\, and that interactions between (lack of) clarity and (lack of) credibility may cause attempts to develop relational contracts to founder. \nTogether these papers focus attention on contractual incompleteness both across and within firms and how these two sets of incomplete agreements (whose formal terms increasingly converge) interact. During our time together will consider the implications of these and other perspectives for relational contracts\, contract governance and the theory of the firm. \nOn the first day\, panels of three academics joined by others present will interview business executives\, supply chain managers\, lawyers working with particular types of contracts (tentatively manufacturing\, pharmaceutical development and manufacturing\, and business process outsourcing) and others tasked with the design and implementation of contracts with a view towards understanding how these transactions play out on the ground and how real-world actors view the building blocks of the ideas developed by the academics. \nThe second day starts with three sessions\, one on each of the academic perspectives set out above. The papers will not be presented. Rather\, the discussion will be kicked off by two 5 minute comments. The fourth session\, led by Luigi Zingales\, will be a discussion of the implications of the papers for the theory of the firm. We will conclude with a conversation about research yet to be done. \nConfirmed Academic Participants\n \n \nEmilie Aguirre (Chicago) \nNick Argyres (Wash U) \nDouglas Baird (Chicago) \nOren Bar-Gil (Harvard) \nDan Barron (Kellogg) \nLisa Bernstein (Chicago) \nBrian Bix (Minnesota) \nMichelle Drake (Chicago) \nTore Ellingsen (Stockholm School of Economics) \nMatthias Fahn (Johannes Kepler University Linz and CEPR) \nBob Gibbons (MIT) \nRonald Gilson (Columbia/Stanford) \nGillian Hadfield (Toronto) \nMaija Halonen-Akatwijuka (Bristol) \nRobert Handfield (North Carolina State) \nHenry Hansmann (Yale) \nOliver Hart (Harvard) \nDaniel Hemel (University of Chicago Law School) \nRebecca Henderson (Harvard)\, \nRichard Holden (UNSW) \nEmily Kadens (Northwestern) \nMike Klausner (Stanford) \nDan Klerman (USC) \nFrancine La Fontaine (Michigan) \nHenrik Lando (Copenhagen) \nRegis Lanneau (University of Paris Nanterre) \nW. Bentley Macleod (Columbia) \nJames Malcomson (Oxford) \nBruce Markell (Northwestern) \nClaude Menard (Sorbonne) \nDavid Miller (Michigan) \nAmeet Morjaria (Northwestern) \nAlan Morrison (Oxford) \nJoan Neal (Chicago) \nJoanne Oxley (Toronto) \nKish Parella (Washington & Lee) \nMichael Powell (Northwestern) \nMark Ramseyer (Harvard) \nMari Sako (Oxford) \nRafella Sandun (Harvard) \nKlaus Schmidt (LMU) \nRobert Scott (Columbia) \nAlan Schwartz (Yale) \nAnja Shortland (Kings College London) \nBrian Silverman (Toronto) \nKathryn Spier (Harvard) \nChad Syverson (Chicago) \nGeorge Triantis (Stanford) \nMarta Troya-Martinez (New Economic School and CESinfo) \nWilliam Wilhelm (UVA) \nKate Vitasek (Tennessee) \nDavid Weisbach (Chicago) \nRupert Younger (Oxford) \nGeorgio Zanarone (Wash U) \nChristian Zehnder (HEC Lausanne) \nLuigi Zingales (Chicago) \n\n Read More +\n Show Less -\n \n \n\nConfirmed Business/Legal Participants\n \n \nTheodore Banks (Scharf Banks Marmor LLC & Loyola Univ.) \nTim Cummins (WCC & Leeds) \nDavid Frydlinger (Practice) \nMarcia Glenn (formerly Kraft Foods) \nKristie Hamilton (General Motors) \nStella Katz (Philips Health Care\, Supply Chain) \nWolfgang Kreutzer (P&G) \nWill Morris (Rolls-Royce) \nRobin Nuttall (McKinsey) \nChristine Palumbo (Modelez Global) \nBrad Peterson (Mayer Brown) \nUgur Sahin (BioNtech) \nPaul Sim (Boeing) \n\n Read More +\n Show Less - URL:https://legacy.bfistage.com/event/academic-symposium-relational-contracts-theory-and-practice/ LOCATION:Virtual Event CATEGORIES:Academic Conferences ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://legacy.bfistage.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Symposium-April-2021.png END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR