lynx   »   [go: up one dir, main page]
IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/wil/wileco/2006-05.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Contracts, Hold-Up, and Exports: Textiles and Opium in Colonial India

Author

Listed:
Abstract
Trade and export, it is argued, spur economic growth. This paper studies the microeconomics of exporting. We build a heuristic model of transactions between exporters and producers and relate it to East India Company operations in colonial Bengal. Our model and the historical record stress two difficulties: the exporter and its agents might not uphold pricing agreements, and producers might not honor sales contracts. The model shows when procurement succeeds or fails, highlighting the tension between these two hold-up problems. We analyze several cases including the East India Company's textile venture, the famous Opium Monopoly, and present-day contract farming.

Suggested Citation

  • Anand V. Swamy & Rachel E. Kranton, 2006. "Contracts, Hold-Up, and Exports: Textiles and Opium in Colonial India," Department of Economics Working Papers 2006-05, Department of Economics, Williams College.
    • Handle: RePEc:wil:wileco:2006-05
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://web.williams.edu/Economics/wp/swamytextileopiumdecember2006final.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. George Baker & Robert Gibbons & Kevin J. Murphy, 2002. "Relational Contracts and the Theory of the Firm," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 117(1), pages 39-84.
    2. Hart, Oliver & Moore, John, 1990. "Property Rights and the Nature of the Firm," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 98(6), pages 1119-1158, December.
    3. Brambilla, Irene & Porto, Guido, 2005. "Farm Productivity and Market Structure: Evidence from Cotton Reforms in Zambia," Working Papers 5, Yale University, Department of Economics.
    4. Abhijit Banerjee & Lakshmi Iyer, 2005. "History, Institutions, and Economic Performance: The Legacy of Colonial Land Tenure Systems in India," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 95(4), pages 1190-1213, September.
    5. Greif, Avner, 1993. "Contract Enforceability and Economic Institutions in Early Trade: the Maghribi Traders' Coalition," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 83(3), pages 525-548, June.
    6. Rauch, James E. & Watson, Joel, 2003. "Starting small in an unfamiliar environment," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 21(7), pages 1021-1042, September.
    7. Carlos, Ann M. & Nicholas, Stephen, 1990. "Agency Problems in Early Chartered Companies: The Case of the Hudson’s Bay Company," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 50(4), pages 853-875, December.
    8. Tirthankar Roy, 1997. "Capitalism and community: A study of the Madurai Sourashtras," The Indian Economic & Social History Review, , vol. 34(4), pages 437-463, December.
    9. Grossman, Sanford J & Hart, Oliver D, 1986. "The Costs and Benefits of Ownership: A Theory of Vertical and Lateral Integration," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 94(4), pages 691-719, August.
    10. Rothschild, Michael, 1974. "A two-armed bandit theory of market pricing," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 9(2), pages 185-202, October.
    11. Michihiro Kandori, 1992. "Social Norms and Community Enforcement," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 59(1), pages 63-80.
    12. Bardhan, Pranab K, 1980. "Interlocking Factor Markets and Agrarian Development: A Review of Issues," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 32(1), pages 82-98, March.
    13. Biggs, Tyler & Raturi, Mayank & Srivastava, Pradeep, 2002. "Ethnic networks and access to credit: evidence from the manufacturing sector in Kenya," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 49(4), pages 473-486, December.
    14. Edlin, Aaron S & Hermalin, Benjamin E, 2000. "Contract Renegotiation and Options in Agency Problems," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 16(2), pages 395-423, October.
    15. Clay, Karen, 1997. "Trade without Law: Private-Order Institutions in Mexican California," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 13(1), pages 202-231, April.
    16. Hejeebu, Santhi, 2005. "Contract Enforcement in the English East India Company," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 65(2), pages 496-523, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Bohdan Kukharskyy & Michael Pflüger, 2011. "Relational Contracts and the Economic Well-Being of Nations," Working Papers 095, Bavarian Graduate Program in Economics (BGPE).
    2. Defever, Fabrice & Fischer, Christian & Suedekum, Jens, 2016. "Relational contracts and supplier turnover in the global economy," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 103(C), pages 147-165.
    3. Defever, Fabrice & Fischer, Christian & Suedekum, Jens, 2017. "Supplier search and re-matching in global sourcing: theory and evidence from China," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 86605, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    4. Robert Gibbons & John Roberts, 2012. "The Handbook of Organizational Economics," Economics Books, Princeton University Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 9889.
    5. Besley, Timothy & Ghatak, Maitreesh, 2010. "Property Rights and Economic Development," Handbook of Development Economics, in: Dani Rodrik & Mark Rosenzweig (ed.), Handbook of Development Economics, edition 1, volume 5, chapter 0, pages 4525-4595, Elsevier.
    6. Garey Ramey & Joel Watson, 2002. "Contractual Intermediaries," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 18(2), pages 362-384, October.
    7. Ennio E. Piano, 2021. "Organizing high-end restaurants," Economics of Governance, Springer, vol. 22(2), pages 165-192, June.
    8. Andreas Roider, 2004. "Asset Ownership and Contractibility of Interaction," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 35(4), pages 787-802, Winter.
    9. Duarte N. Leite & Sandra T. Silva & Oscar Afonso, 2014. "Institutions, Economics And The Development Quest," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 28(3), pages 491-515, July.
    10. Vincenzo Scoppa, 2003. "Contratti incompleti ed enforcement endogeno. Una rassegna della letteratura," Economia politica, Società editrice il Mulino, issue 3, pages 391-440.
    11. Ilya Segal & Michael D.Whinston, 2012. "Property Rights [The Handbook of Organizational Economics]," Introductory Chapters,, Princeton University Press.
    12. Colombo, Ferdinando & Merzoni, Guido, 2006. "In praise of rigidity: The bright side of long-term contracts in repeated trust games," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 59(3), pages 349-373, March.
    13. Peter G. Klein & Michael E. Sykuta, 2010. "Editors’ Introduction," Chapters, in: Peter G. Klein & Michael E. Sykuta (ed.), The Elgar Companion to Transaction Cost Economics, chapter 1, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    14. Christopher Hansman & Jonas Hjort & Gianmarco León-Ciliotta & Matthieu Teachout, 2020. "Vertical Integration, Supplier Behavior, and Quality Upgrading among Exporters," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 128(9), pages 3570-3625.
    15. Kim, Jongwook & Mahoney, Joseph T., 2008. "A Strategic Theory of the Firm as a Nexus of Incomplete Contracts: A Property Rights Approach," Working Papers 08-0108, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, College of Business.
    16. Patrick W. Schmitz, 2006. "Information Gathering, Transaction Costs, and the Property Rights Approach," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 96(1), pages 422-434, March.
    17. Hideshi Itoh, 2006. "The Theories of International Outsourcing and Integration : A Theoretical Overview from the Perspective of Organizational Economics," Microeconomics Working Papers 21891, East Asian Bureau of Economic Research.
    18. Pedro Bó, 2007. "Social norms, cooperation and inequality," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 30(1), pages 89-105, January.
    19. Rosenkranz, Stephanie & Schmitz, Patrick W., 2003. "Optimal allocation of ownership rights in dynamic R&D alliances," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 43(1), pages 153-173, April.
    20. Daron Acemoglu & Alexander Wolitzky, 2015. "Sustaining Cooperation: Community Enforcement vs. Specialized Enforcement," NBER Working Papers 21457, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:wil:wileco:2006-05. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Greg Phelan (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/edwilus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.
    Лучший частный хостинг