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Cited by 384

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 107 of the 107 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.

Reputations, Relationships, and Contract Enforcement

MacLeod, W. Bentley·2007·Journal of Economic Literature
DOI 10.1257/jel.45.3.595
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Abstract

When the quality of a good is at the discretion of the seller, how can buyers assure that the seller provides the mutually efficient level of quality? Contracts that provide a bonus to the seller if the quality is acceptable or impose a penalty on the seller if quality is unacceptable can, in theory, provide efficient incentives. But how are such contracts enforced? While the courts can be used, doing so involves high real costs. Informal enforcement, involving a loss of reputation and future access to the market for any party that defaults on a contract, may often be a better alternative. This paper explores the use of both formal and informal enforcement mechanisms, provides a rationale for a variety of observed market mechanisms, and then generates a number of testable hypotheses.

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Metadata

Authors
MacLeod, W. B.
Venue
Journal of Economic Literature
Publisher
American Economic Association
Published
2007-07-01
Volume
45
Issue
3
Pages
595-628
ISSN
0022-0515 (ISSN-L)
DOI
10.1257/jel.45.3.595
OpenAlex
W2078030625
Cited by
384
References
107
FWCI
45.73
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
closed

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CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Reputations, Relationships, and Contract Enforcement. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1257/jel.45.3.595
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MacLeod, W. B. (2007). Reputations, Relationships, and Contract Enforcement. Journal of Economic Literature. https://doi.org/10.1257/jel.45.3.595

Data sources

Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.

Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).

Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.