Civil Rights
Movements, leaders, victories and the continuing fight for equality.
q2K BHP
Black History Portal
THE BHP WIRE —
HIDDEN TRUTHS
What's New!
Explore the people, places, events, achievements, struggles and stories that shaped our journey.
Movements, leaders, victories and the continuing fight for equality.
Innovation, patents, science, technology and world-changing contributions.
Pioneers, champions, Negro Leagues, records, activism and excellence.
Meet the people whose lives, choices and achievements shaped the journey.
Black towns, communities, institutions and places where history happened.
Moments that changed communities, movements, institutions and the nation.
Katherine Johnson’s mathematical calculations helped guide some of America’s most important early space missions while she confronted the racial and gender barriers faced by Black women in twentieth-century America.
MORE →Reflects the personal views, recollections, and perspective of the author, Mike Davis.
This is a personal recollection on the Move fire on May 13, 1985
A complete contract is an important concept from contract theory. If the parties to an agreement could specify their respective rights and duties for every possible future state of the world, their contract would be complete. There would be no gaps in the terms of the contract.
However, because it would be prohibitively expensive to write a complete contract, contracts in the real world are usually incomplete. When a dispute arises and the case falls into a gap in the contract, either the parties must engage in bargaining or the courts must step in and fill in the gap. The idea of a complete contract is closely related to the notion of default rules, e.g. legal rules that will fill the gap in a contract in the absence of an agreed upon provision.
In economics, the field of contract theory can be subdivided into the theory of complete contracts and the theory of incomplete contracts.[1] Complete contracting theory is also called agency theory (or principal-agent theory) and closely related to (Bayesian) mechanism design and implementation theory. The two most important classes of models in complete contracting theory are adverse selection and moral hazard models. In this part of contract theory, every conceivable contractual arrangement between the contractual parties is allowed, provided it is feasible given the relevant technological and information constraints. In the presence of asymmetric information, the optimization problems can be handled due to the revelation principle. A leading textbook exposition of complete contract theory is Laffont and Martimort (2002).[2]
In contrast, incomplete contracting models consider situations in which only a restricted class of contracts is allowed, e.g. only simple ownership structures can be contractually specified in the Grossman-Hart-Moore theory of the firm.[3]
Source: Wikipedia. Article content is retrieved live through the MediaWiki API.
A complete contract is an important concept from contract theory. If the parties to an agreement could specify their respective rights and duties for every possible future state of the world, their contract would be complete. There would be no gaps in the terms of the contract. However, because it would be prohibitively expensive to write a complete contract, contracts in the real world are usually incomplete. When a dispute arises and the case falls into a gap in the contract, either the parties must engage in bargaining or the courts must step in and fill in the gap. The idea of a complete contract is closely related to the notion of default rules, e.g. legal rules that will fill the gap in a contract in the absence of an agreed upon provision. In economics, the field of contract theory can be subdivided into the theory of complete contracts and the theory of incomplete contracts. Complete contracting theory is also called agency theory (or principal-agent theory) and closely related to (Bayesian) mechanism design and implementation theory. The two most important classes of models in complete contracting theory are adverse selection and moral hazard models. In this part of contract theory, every conceivable contractual arrangement between the contractual parties is allowed, provided it is feasible given the relevant technological and information constraints. In the presence of asymmetric information, the optimization problems can be handled due to the revelation principle. A leading textbook exposition of complete contract theory is Laffont and Martimort (2002). In contrast, incomplete contracting models consider situations in which only a restricted class of contracts is allowed, e.g. only simple ownership structures can be contractually specified in the Grossman-Hart-Moore theory of the firm.
In contract law, an incomplete contract is one that is defective or uncertain in a material respect. In economic theory, an incomplete contract (as opposed to a complete contract) is one that does not provide for the rights, obligations and remedies of the parties in every possible state of the world. Since the human mind is a scarce resource and the mind cannot collect, process, and understand an infinite amount of information, economic actors are limited in their rationality (the limitations of the human mind in understanding and solving complex problems) and one cannot anticipate all possible contingencies. Or perhaps because it is too expensive to write a complete contract, the parties will opt for a "sufficiently complete" contract. In short, in practice, every contract is incomplete for a variety of reasons and limitations. The incompleteness of a contract also means that the protection it provides may be inadequate. Even if a contract is incomplete, the legal validity of the contract cannot be denied, and an incomplete contract does not mean that it is unenforceable. The terms and provisions of the contract still have influence and are binding on the parties to the contract. As for contractual incompleteness, the law is concerned with when and how a court should fill gaps in a contract when they are too many or too uncertain to be enforceable, and when it is obliged to negotiate to make an incomplete contract fully complete or to achieve the desired final contract. The incomplete contracting paradigm was pioneered by Sanford J. Grossman, Oliver D. Hart, and John H. Moore. In their seminal contributions, Grossman and Hart (1986), Hart and Moore (1990), and Hart (1995) argue that in practice, contracts cannot specify what is to be done in every possible contingency. At the time of contracting, future contingencies may not even be describable. Moreover, parties cannot commit themselves never to engage in mutually beneficial renegotiation later on in their relationship. Thus, an immediate consequence of the incomplete contracting approach is the so-called hold-up problem. Since at least in some states of the world the parties will renegotiate their contractual arrangements later on, they have insufficient incentives to make relationship-specific investments (since a party's investment returns will partially go to the other party in the renegotiations). Oliver Hart and his co-authors argue that the hold-up problem may be mitigated by choosing a suitable ownership structure ex-ante (according to the incomplete contracting paradigm, more complex contractual arrangements are ruled out). Hence, the property rights approach to the theory of the firm can explain the pros and cons of vertical integration, thus providing a formal answer to important questions regarding the boundaries of the firm that were first raised by Ronald Coase (1937). The incomplete contracting approach has been subject of a still ongoing discussion in contract theory. In particular, some authors such as Maskin and Tirole (1999) argue that rational parties should be able to solve the hold-up problem with complex contracts, while Hart and Moore (1999) point out that these contractual solutions do not work if renegotiation cannot be ruled out. Some authors have argued that the pros and cons of vertical integration can sometimes also be explained in complete contracting models. The property rights approach based on incomplete contracting has been criticized by Williamson (2000) because it is focused on ex-ante investment incentives, while it neglects ex-post inefficiencies. It has been pointed out by Schmitz (2006) that the property rights approach can be extended to the case of asymmetric information, which may explain ex-post inefficiencies. The property rights approach has also been extended by Chiu (1998) and DeMeza and Lockwood (1998), who allow for different ways to model the renegotiations. In a more recent extension, Hart and Moore (2008) have argued that contracts may serve as reference points. The theory of incomplete contracts has been successfully applied in various contexts, including privatization, international trade, management of research & development, allocation of formal and real authority, advocacy, and many others. The 2016 Nobel Prize in Economics was awarded to Oliver D. Hart and Bengt Holmström for their contribution to contract theory, including incomplete contracts.
In legal theory, a default rule is a rule of law that can be overridden by a contract, trust, will, or other legally effective agreement. Contract law, for example, can be divided into two kinds of rules: default rules and mandatory rules. Whereas the default rules can be modified by agreement of the parties, mandatory rules will be enforced, even if the parties to a contract attempt to override or modify them. One of the most important debates in contract theory concerns the proper role or purpose of default rules. The idea of a default rule in contract law is sometimes connected to the notion of a complete contract. In contract theory, a complete contract fully specifies the rights and duties of the parties to the contract for all possible future states of the world. An incomplete contract, therefore, contains gaps. Most contract theorists find that default rules fill in the gaps in what would otherwise be incomplete contracts. This is often stated pragmatically as whether a court will imply terms so as to save a contract from uncertainty.
A contract manufacturer (CM) produces goods under contract for an outsourcing company under the label or brand name of that company. If the good is a complete product, rather than product component(s), the CM may be termed a turnkey supplier. A contract manufacturer performing packaging operations is called copacker or a contract packager. Brand name companies focus on product innovation, design and sales, while the manufacturing takes place in independent factories (the turnkey suppliers). Most turnkey suppliers specialize in simply manufacturing physical products, but some are also able to handle a significant part of the design and customization process if needed. Some turnkey suppliers specialize in one base component (e.g. memory chips) or a base process (e.g. plastic molding).
Before the 1921 destruction of Tulsa’s Greenwood District, Black residents had created a remarkable center of business and community life. The district included stores, professional offices, entertainment venues and homes owned by Black citizens. Understanding Greenwood means learning what was built—not only what was burned.
MORE →Mae Jemison, aboard Space Shuttle Endeavour in 1992.