Contracts, Hold-Up, and Exports: Textiles and Opium in Colonial India
通过东印度公司在孟加拉的案例，分析出口商与生产者之间的交易难题，指出双方都可能违约，并用历史案例说明这种敲竹杠问题如何影响采购成败。
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 (EIC) operations in colonial Bengal. Our model and the historical record stress two difficulties: the exporter and its agents might not uphold payment 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 EIC's cotton textile venture, the famous Opium Monopoly, and present-day contract farming.