Entrepreneurs, Contracts, and the Failure of Young Firms
通过分析170份新特许经营合同及16位创始人的访谈，发现采用独家经营区域的新特许经营连锁更可能存活，且成功与失败的创业者对合同设计拥有不同信息，其合同实验更符合经济理论的创业者更可能生存。
Although economic theory has emphasized that moral hazard and hold-up problems influence the design of contracts, very little is known about the process by which explicit contracts are established and the effect of contractual arrangements on firm performance. This paper attempts to demonstrate that firms are selected for survival on the basis of contracting efficiency. Based on a statistical analysis of 170 new franchise contracts and interviews with the founders of 16 of these new franchise systems, we show that new franchise chains that adopt exclusive territories are more likely to survive over time than chains that do not. Moreover, successful and failed entrepreneurs possess different information about how to design contracts. These entrepreneurs undertake “contractual experiments” based on the information they possess. Those whose experiments prove to be more consistent with economic theory are rewarded for their superior information with survival.