Showing papers on "Principal (commercial law) published in 1988"

Principal/agent theory and decisionmaking in health care.

Abstract: KIE: Principal/agent theory, an economics concept that defines an agency relationship as "a contract under which one or more persons engage another person (the agent) to perform some service on their behalf which involves delegating some decision-making authority to the agent," is held to be applicable to the patient/physician relationship, in contrast to the view that this is a fiduciary relationship, not a contractual one. The distinction between fiduciary and contractual relationships is illuminated in the process of evaluating objections to the application of the principal/agent theory to the patient/physician relationship. The ability of the principal/agent theory to reveal important features of advance directives, understood as public documents rather than as confidential instructions from patient to physician, is also examined.

A noncausal theory of agency

Abstract: In this paper, I assume the plausibility of agency theory or libertarianism and develop a noncausal theory of agency. For the most part, agency theorists have been causal theorists of action. According to causal theories of action, the essential difference between actions and mere happenings is to be found in their prior causal histories. Causal agency theorists hold that actions are events which at some point are caused by agents, as opposed to other events. Hence, they have been called agent-causationists. However, the concept of agent-causation has been much criticized and its two principal advocates have now renounced it.' Therefore, an important question is whether one can have agency without agent-causation. I believe that one can, and in this paper I go some way in explaining how this is possible. In Section I, I do three things. First, I state a desideratum which the agent-causationist claims any theory of agency must satisfy. Second, I summarize why agent-causationists have claimed both that a noncausal theory of agency cannot satisfy thts desideratum and that the concept of agent-causation is a necessary element in an agency theory which does fulfill it. Third, I explain how agent-causation does not provide an agency theory which satisfies this desideratum and show how agent-causation is actually superfluous for this task, once the concept of a reason for acting has been invoked to explain an action's performance. In other words, I

The ‘new’ policy approach to housing: A review of the literature

Abstract: A new convention of ‘self-help housing’ has become established over the past 20 years. However, a close examination of the literature shows that this approach is not widely implemented, but remains largely at the level of showcase projects; moreover the lowest income groups are usually not the principal beneficiaries of sites-and-service schemes. The literature gives evidence of powerful political, administrative and economic interests against the large-scale legal delivery of sites-and-services, and in favour of the continued dependence of the poor on illegal access.

Profit-Sharing Arrangements in a Team and the Cost of Information

Abstract: The LEN-Model (referring to "linear functions", "exponential utility" and "normal distribution" as major properties of the LEN-Model) allows to study profit-sharing agreements in a team of principal and agent. First, this article describes and analyses the LEN-Model again (which was originally presented in 1987 by the same author). Second, agency costs are identified and calculated. Agency costs in a principal-agent relationship are seen as an information value. The question behind the nature of agency costs is: how much would principal and agent be willing to pay to overcome the disadvantages of asymmetric information they have in their relationship. The answer is given by the information value.

Information Revelation and Principal-Agent Contracts

Abstract: In an environment in which effort is private information to the worker, agreements between a risk-neutral principal and a risk-averse agent are likely to be risk-sharing and information-revealing mechanisms. It is shown that principal-agent contracts have significant implications for both compensation and employment rules in a simple work-sharing model. In general, such contracts involve incomplete income insurance and involuntary or excessive underemployment. This supports the view that models of worker-specific information, particularly with moral hazard, provide a natural explanation of underemployment.

Central Law and Peripheral Law

Abstract: The aim of these observations is to provide an overall view of the features of legislative decentralization on a territorial basis (whatever the name given to the local entities — member states, regions, regioni, Lander, comunidades autonomas, etc.) as they have developed in the principal contemporary legal systems, from the particular viewpoint of their repercussions on the law-making process and, more generally, on the sources of law system.

The Public and Private Regulation of Health Care Markets

Abstract: Policy-makers in health care systems throughout the world are facing similar problems and their attempts to grapple with these problems are leading to a sharper definition of the universal policy issues and the alternative ways of dealing with them. The principal issues of health care in the 1980s seem to be cost-containment, best subsumed into the general problem of efficiency and distributional equity.

Criminal Lawyers: The Use of Electronic Surveillance and Search Warrants In the Investigation and Prosecution of Attorneys Suspected of Criminal Wrongdoing

Abstract: A license to practice law is not a license to commit crime. When an attorney uses his position to aid an organized crime client in ongoing criminal activity or in running a criminal enterprise, few would disagree that government has the right, indeed the duty, to investigate and prosecute that person to at least the same extent they would his principal.' Law enforcement has the obligation not only to stop and punish the criminal conduct at issue, but also to protect the integrity of the criminal justice system itself. Nonetheless, very real dangers may arise when law enforcement officers investigate attorneys believed to be using their status as attorneys to commit or aid criminal wrongdoing, particularly when the investigative techniques used include the execution of search and electronic surveillance warrants. An intrusion into legitimate attorneyclient communications may occur. The knowledge that such investiga-

The New Swiss Law on International Arbitration

Abstract: ON 18 December 1987, the Parliament of Switzerland finally adopted, by a nearly unanimous vote 1, a comprehensive ‘Federal Act on Private International Law.’ This statute, whose preparation by a group of experts had started in 1973, contained 200 articles and deals with practically all domains of private international law including (apart from the conflict of laws in the fields of family relations, corporations, contracts, torts, etc.) jurisdiction of Swiss courts, recognition and enforcement of foreign decisions, bankruptcy and arbitration. A Chapter 12 of the Act (Articles 176 to 194) deals, for the first time in Swiss legal history, with ‘international arbitration,’ which is now clearly and officially distinguished from domestic arbitration, in contradistinction to the present regime of the so-called ‘Concordat’ (Intercantonal Convention on Arbitration, 1969, hereinafter ‘CIA’ as per its French acronym). Having regard to the important role traditionally played by Switzerland as a host country to many international arbitrations — be they purely commercial, or inter-State, or between a State or State organisation and a private party – the following general presentation, although limited to essentials for reasons of space, will, it is hoped, be of interest to practitioners in the field of international transactions. In order properly to understand the philosophy and the novelty of this law, as well as the meaning of its principal provisions on arbitration, the reader must bear in mind the main features of the legal regime now obtaining in Switzerland2 and some facts of the legislative history of the new Statute. But a first question should be answered: Why was the need felt to legislate on the subject, less than twenty years after the adoption of the Swiss CIA? The CIA indisputably constituted a major advance at the time, not the least because it suppressed or at least diminished …

The Interaction of Implicit and Explicit Contracts in Repeated Agency

Abstract: Traditional agency theory assumes that the principal has no more information about the agent's actions than the enforcement authorities have. This is unrealistic in many settings, and in repeated models, additional information possessed by the principal changes the nature of the problem. Such information can be used in implicit, self-enforcing contracts between principal and agent, that supplement the usual explicit contracts. This paper studies the way in which the two kinds of contracts are combined in constrained efficient equilibria of the agency supergame. The agent's compensation is comprised of both guaranteed payments and voluntary bonuses from the principal. We give a simple characterization of the composition of remuneration in the optimal dynamic scheme.

A Contribution To the Study of the Koranic Sources of Saudi Arabian Business Law

Abstract: From the study of commercial contracts made between the Saudi Arabians and European exporters, it is apparent that the latter have too much of a tendency to view the Saudi authorities as the source of the country's law. In doing so they are ignoring the key role played by Islamic Hanbali law.l Their view of the kingdom's law is all the more difficult to understand and accept since a good knowledge of it would be of benefit to them at all stages of the contractual process. In effect such a knowledge would lead to smooth and enlightened negotiations, with a final written agreement free from any infringement of the fundamental principles of the Shari'a. Finally in the event of litigation, it would make a decisive contribution to the protection of their legal rights. However, consider the case of an unfortunate European company, which even after execution had begun, had no redress against its Saudi counterparts, who came back on a major contract, already signed and sealed, because all its pages had not been initialled, this happening even though Hanbali Muslim law, for the very reason of itS religious character, knows no formalities. From this last trait flows one of the principal characteristics of the Islamic legal system, namely that the sovereign has no legislative power, this belorlging on one hand tO God and to the Prophet Mohamrned, so far as he received and conveyed his interpretations of a sacred and eternal book. On the other hand, legislative power belongs tO the "legal theologian", who has the task of extricating concrete laws, resulting from a process of rationalising the Koran and Sunna. It follows that notwithstanding their general and abstract signiIScance and their socio-economic importance, the acts of the Saudi Government are sub ject to the law of the Koran. Unable to encroach upon the areas regulated by the Koran, they need to conform, at the very least, to the spirit of the Book. Due to its source, once such a law is revealed, it is placed at the top of the hierarchy of legal norms applicable in the Kingdom. In this way, we can return to the first peculiarity of Muslim law, that is that it is not a question of a discipline independent and separate from theology but is one of the two elements which together make up the Islamic faith. As the Prophet Mohammed solemnly declared in his sermon on Mount