Liability and Organizational Choice
研究了责任增加如何影响企业外包决策，发现利用濒临破产企业外包虽能限制责任，但会因护理水平扭曲产生额外成本，可能使外包并非最优选择。
Scholars have long maintained that increases in liability encourage firms to contract out risky activities in order to take advantage of so‐called judgment‐proof strategies. These strategies allow entities to limit their liability through contractual arrangements with nearly insolvent firms. However, the use of judgment‐proof firms triggers countervailing effects: it provides opportunities to externalize liability through judgment‐proof firms, but the insolvency of these firms introduces distortion in care levels that can generate more liability costs. These costs may outweigh the benefits of externalizing liability, making contracting out suboptimal. A simple model of organizational decision making with judgment‐proof firms is developed and applied to the oil industry, where contracting out decreased in response to heightened liability following the Exxon Valdez oil spill.