Relational Contracts and the Value of Loyalty
研究了委托人在面临敲竹杠威胁时，如何在多个代理人之间重复选择的最优契约，发现委托人会将代理人分为内部人和外部人，并偏向内部人。
This paper characterizes the optimal contract for a principal who repeatedly chooses among N potential agents under the threat of holdup. Over time, the principal would like to trade with different agents; however, the possibility of ex-post opportunism allows agents to collect rents and creates a fixed cost of initiating new relationships. In the optimal contract, the principal divides agents into “insiders” with whom she trades efficiently, and “outsiders” whom she is biased against. The optimal contract is self-enforcing if the principal is sufficiently patient and can be implemented by an “employment contract” that is robust to asymmetric information.