It is commonly asserted that unfair trading practices (UTPs) emerge largely as a result of contract incompleteness. In line with this view it is claimed that making contracts more complete will represent an antidote to UTPs. In this paper we argue that this does not need to be the case. This is because contracts, except for their potential to increase the surplus generated in the transaction, determine how this surplus will be divided. This, in turn, makes it possible for both trading partners to use contractual terms to turn the distributional conflict to their advantage. In the presence of unequal distribution of bargaining power this may lead to a situation in which the stronger party may succeed in tilting the contract in its favour by including UTPs in the contract content. Drawing insights from data collected in 2017 through a field survey among dairy farmers in France, Germany, Poland and Spain, we find support for this argument. Our estimation results show that contract completeness increases the likelihood of farmers reporting that their contracts with processors include the practices that may be considered as UTPs. Further, and also in line with this argument, contract completeness does not seem to affect UTPs during the contract execution or its termination.

中文翻译：

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合同制和农民对​​欧盟乳制品行业不公平贸易行为的理解

通常认为，不公平贸易惯例（UTP）在很大程度上是由于合同不完整而出现的。与这种观点一致的是，声称使合同更加完整将代表UTP的解毒剂。在本文中，我们认为情况并非必须如此。这是因为合同除了具有增加交易中产生的盈余的潜力外，还决定了如何对盈余进行分配。反过来，这使两个贸易伙伴都可以使用合同条款将分配冲突转化为对他们有利的条件。在讨价还价分配不均的情况下，这可能导致强者通过将UTP包含在合同内容中来成功地倾斜合同以有利于它。我们通过对法国，德国，波兰和西班牙的奶农进行的一次实地调查从2017年收集的数据中得出了见解，我们对此观点表示支持。我们的估算结果表明，合同的完整性增加了农民报告其与加工者签订的合同包括可能被视为UTP的实践的可能性。此外，也与该论点一致，合同完整性似乎在合同执行或终止期间不会影响UTP。