Contract Design in Processing Trade
研究了加工贸易中买方是控制还是委托质量决策的问题，引入专业知识不对称解释为何买方有时选择委托质量给中国生产商，这对理解国际外包合同设计有参考价值。
ABSTRACT Processing trade may involve buyers contracting with foreign producers to process and assemble intermediate inputs into a final product. The buyer may decide to either contractually control or delegate quality provision for his products. Quality control seems the obvious choice, especially in settings where the producer's production capability is not observable. Correspondingly, the traditional framework based on information asymmetry assigns no value to quality delegation, as the buyer's profits attained by contractually controlling quality can match those of any delegation arrangement. However, in practice, western buyers may also opt for delegating rather than controlling quality provision to their Chinese producers, which creates the need for a theoretical extension of the previous framework. In this article, we enrich the framework of information asymmetry by including expertise asymmetry , which reflects the producers' superior expertise in the production process. With expertise asymmetry, delegating quality may be beneficial as it allows the producer to leverage on his superior expertise and ultimately take more efficient quality decisions.