Contracts

Shavell, Steven

doi:10.2139/ssrn.52360

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Contracts

New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics and the Law (Peter Newman, Ed.), May 1998

28 Pages Posted: 11 Jan 1998

See all articles by Steven Shavell

Steven Shavell

Harvard Law School; National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)

Abstract

The private and the social functions of contracts and of contract law are examined in this entry. In section 1, on the basic theory of contracts, the topics considered include contract formation, why contract enforcement is valuable, the incompleteness of contracts, the interpretation of contracts, remedies for breach, renegotiation of contracts, and judicial overriding of contracts. In section 2, the economic literature on production contracts is reviewed, and in section 3 other types of contract are discussed.

JEL Classification: K12

Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation

Shavell, Steven, Contracts. New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics and the Law (Peter Newman, Ed.), May 1998, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=52360 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.52360