We study relational contracting and renegotiation in environments with external enforcement of long-term contractual arrangements. An external, long-term contract governs the stage games the contracting parties will play in the future (depending on verifiable stage-game outcomes) until they renegotiate. In a contractual equilibrium, the parties choose their individual actions rationally, they jointly optimize when selecting a contract, and they take advantage of their relative bargaining power. Our main result is that in a wide variety of settings, in each period of a contractual equilibrium the parties agree to a semi-stationary external contract, with stationary terms for all future periods but special terms for the current period. In each period the parties renegotiate to this same external contract, effectively adjusting the terms only for the current period. For example, in a simple principal-agent model with a choice of costly monitoring technology, the optimal contract specifies mild monitoring for the current period but intense monitoring for future periods. Because the parties renegotiate in each new period, intense monitoring arises only off the equilibrium path after a failed renegotiation.

中文翻译：

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关系承包，谈判和外部执行

我们在外部执行长期合同安排的情况下研究关系合同和重新谈判。外部长期合同控制着缔约方将来将要进行的舞台游戏（取决于可验证的舞台游戏结果），直到他们重新谈判为止。在合同均衡中，当事方合理选择自己的行为，在选择合同时共同优化，并利用其相对的议价能力。我们的主要结果是，在各种各样的设置中，在合同均衡的每个期间中，当事方都同意使用半固定的外部合同，所有未来期间的固定条件均适用，而当前期间则为特殊条件。在每个期间，当事方都重新协商该外部合同，仅在当前期间有效调整条款。例如，在一个简单的委托-代理模型中，选择了昂贵的监视技术，最佳合同指定对当前期间进行轻度监视，对未来期间进行严格监视。由于双方在每个新时期都进行了重新谈判，因此重新协商失败后，只有在均衡路径之外才会进行严格的监视。