Autore
Gonzales de Lara, Yadira

Titolo
Changes in information and optimal debt contracts
Periodico
European University Institute of Badia Fiesolana (Fi). Department of Economics - Working papers
Anno: 1997 - Fascicolo: 6 - Pagina iniziale: 1 - Pagina finale: 50

In this paper the relevance of public and symmetric information on the enforceability of contracts will be analyze. In particular, it will examine an historical contract, the sea loan, which was used to finance long-distance maritime commerce from the times of ancient Greece to those of the Medieval Ages. A single economy general equilibrium model is set up in which, under certain restrictions, the sea loan emerges as the optimal individually rational contract and it is claimed that these restrictions were very likely to be satisfied by the economy of that time. It will also examine the substitution of this kind of contract— which was enforced by a coercive power relying on public information— by the commenda. This occurred because of the new supply of symmetric and public information, which led an efficient improvement in the sense that both the navigation and the commercial risks were shared, while in the former contract the merchant undertook all the commercial risk alone.



Testo completo: http://hdl.handle.net/1814/615

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