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Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine combinations of contract clauses in order to ascertain which combinations correlate to high operational performance (OP). Design/methodology/approach Two hypotheses were formulated from contracting theory and tested on data collected from 45 projects. Fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis was used and validated with multiple regression and simulation. Findings The hypotheses were tested to determine whether combinations of classical, relational, and/or associational contract clauses correlate to high OP. The results show that whereas high OP correlates to combinations of relational and associational contract clauses, classical and relational clauses should not be combined. Research limitations/implications Directions are proposed to guide future research in order to produce a more nuanced testing of contractual complementarity. Practical implications The managerial implications of the findings include a more thorough understanding of the use of contract clauses and of which clauses managers should combine to achieve high OP. Originality/value This study contributes to the theory of contractual incompleteness and complementarity, specifically in the context of project contracting. The analysis produced two theoretical implications: first, that better performing contracts are created when combining relational and associational contract clauses; and second, that in projects, relational and classical contract clauses are not complementary with regards to realizing high OP.

"Market Coupling'' is currently seen as the most advanced market design in the restructuring of the European electricity market. Market coupling, by construction, introduces what is generally referred to as an incomplete market: it leaves several constraints out of the market and hence avoids pricing them. This may or may not have important consequences in practice depending on the case on hand. Quasi-VariationalInequality problems and the associated Generalized Nash Equilibrium can be used for representing incomplete markets. Recent papers propose methods for finding a set of solutions of Quasi-Variational Inequality problems. We apply one of these methods to a subproblem of market coupling namely the coordination of counter-trading. This problem is an illustration of a more general question encountered for instance in hierarchical planning in production management. We first discuss the economic interpretation of the Quasi-Variational Inequality problem. We then apply the algorithmic approach to a set of stylized case studies in order to illustrate the impact of different organizations of counter-trading. The paper emphazises the structuring of the problem. A companion paper considers the full problem of market coupling and counter-trading and presents a more extensive numerical analysis.

Consider an economy populated by males and females, both rich and poor. The society has to choose one of the following marriage institutions: polygyny, strict monogamy, and serial monogamy (divorce and remarriage). After having identified the conditions under which each of these equilibria exists, we show that a rise in the share of rich males can explain a change of regime from polygyny to monogamy. The introduction of serial monogamy follows from a further rise in either the proportion of rich males, or an increase in the proportion of rich females. Strict monogamy is a prerequisite to serial monogamy, as it promotes the upward social mobility of females more than polygyny. We also show that polygyny is compatible with democracy.

Worldwide income taxation in the country of residence is a legal dogma of international taxation. We question this dogma from the perspective of relations between developed and developing countries from a legal and economic perspective, and make a modern and fair proposal for tax treaties. We will show under which conditions a developing and a developed country will voluntarily sign a tax treaty where information is exchanged truthfully and whether they should share revenues. Moreover, we will demonstrate how the conclusion of a tax treaty can assist in the implementation of a tax audit system., Series: WU International Taxation Research Paper Series

This paper endogenizes the extent of intra-sectoral competition in a multi-sectoral general-equilibrium model of oligopoly and trade. Firms choose capacity followed by prices. If the benefits of capacity investment in a given sector are below a threshold level, the sector exhibits Bertrand behaviour, otherwise it exhibits Cournot behaviour. By endogenizing the threshold parameter in general equilibrium, we show how exogenous shocks such as globalization and technological change alter the mix of sectors between “more” and “less” competitive, or Bertrand and Cournot, and affect the relative wages of skilled and unskilled workers, even in a “North-North” model with identical countries.

We propose two axioms that introduce lower bounds into resource monotonicity requirements for rules for the problem of adjudicating conflicting claims. Suppose the amount to divide increases. The first axiom requires that two claimants whose lower bound changes equally experience an equal change in awards. The second axiom requires that extra resources are divided only among those claimants who experience a strictly positive change in their lower bound. We show that, in the two-claimant case, Concede-and-Divide is the only rule that satisfies both axioms when the axioms are defined over a large set of lower bounds that include the minimal rights lower bound and the secured lower bound. We also show that, in the n-claimant case where at least one claimant claims the total amount, the Minimal Overlap rule is the only rule that satisfies both axioms when the axioms are defined over the secured lower bound.

A new nonparametric estimator of production frontiers is defined and studied when the data set of production units is contaminated by measurement error. The measurement error is assumed to be an additive normal random variable on the input variable, but its variance is unknown. The estimator is a modification of the m-frontier, which necessitates the computation of a consistent estimator of the conditional survival function of the input variable given the output variable. In this paper, the identification and the consistency of a new estimator of the survival function is proved in the presence of additive noise with unknown variance. The performance of the estimator is also studied through simulated data.