Broken Contract Research Articles

Highly illogical, Kirk: spotting type mismatches in the large despite broken contracts, unsound types, and too many linters

The DefinitelyTyped repository hosts type declarations for thousands of JavaScript libraries. Given the lack of formal connection between the types and the corresponding code, a natural question is are the types right? An equally important question, as DefinitelyTyped and the libraries it supports change over time, is how can we keep the types from becoming wrong? In this paper we offer Scotty, a tool that detects mismatches between the types and code in the Definitely-Typed repository. More specifically, Scotty checks each package by converting its types into contracts and installing the contracts on the boundary between the library and its test suite. Running the test suite in this environment can reveal mismatches between the types and the JavaScript code. As automation and generality are both essential if such a tool is going to remain useful in the long term, we focus on techniques that sacrifice completeness, instead preferring to avoid false positives. Scotty currently handles about 26% of the 8006 packages on DefinitelyTyped (61% of the packages whose code is available and whose test suite passes). Perhaps unsurprisingly, running the tests with these contracts in place revealed many errors in Definitely-Typed. More surprisingly, despite the inherent limitations of the techniques we use, this exercise led to one hundred accepted pull requests that fix errors in DefinitelyTyped, demonstrating the value of this approach for the long-term maintenance of DefinitelyTyped. It also revealed a number of lessons about working in the JavaScript ecosystem and how details beyond the semantics of the language can be surprisingly important. Best of all, it also revealed a few places where programmers preferred incorrect types, suggesting some avenues of research to improve TypeScript.

Corporate Nationality and the Breaking of State Contracts

Rachel L. Wellhausen. (2015). The Shield of Nationality: When Governments Break Contracts with Foreign Firms. Cambridge University Press, New York, 285 pp., $95.00 hardcover (ISBN 978-1-107-08276-2). The interest in global corporations’ activity and behavior is at least in part driven by the perception that these massive firms have become more powerful than states. Indeed, we are often told both in popular accounts and in (some) academic analysis that these firms are able to shape and shift national political economies toward their own needs and interests. However, these broad arguments seldom survive detailed empirical testing, leaving the tendencies in place but often much reducing their strength. In this new book, Rachel Wellhausen looks at the question of the relations between states and firms when contracts between them are broken by states’ governments as a site for testing these sorts of conclusions. Building on a relatively well-developed literature about the observable nationality of corporations, Wellhausen explores states’ governments’ differential treatment of global corporations by virtue of their “nationality,” and the variety of reasons that a government might breach a contract with a corporation. As she sets out, generally governments may withhold payments for internal/domestic political reasons: this can be a response to political resistance to programs of privatization that these non-domestic corporations may have been … c.may{at}lancaster.ac.uk

Left Unsaid: The Role of Work Expectations and Psychological Contracts in Faculty Careers and Departure

Early career faculty bring many expectations to the door-steps of their new academic homes. Yet such expectations are often left unsaid. Unfortunately, what is left unsaid can be a major factor in faculty departure. This study makes a distinct contribution to the departure literature by examining the psychological contracts and work expectations of 33 faculty who left or were about to leave their university. Unfulfilled expectations and broken contracts about professional relationships, the nature of faculty work and the reward system, and resources shaped faculty departure decisions. We draw implications for the recruitment and retention of early career faculty.

Xinjiang under China: reflections on the multiple dimensions of the 2009 Urumqi uprising

In 2009, a demonstration in Urumqi deteriorated into one of the bloodiest riots in contemporary Chinese history. Some scholars and media groups have responded to the event by focusing public attention on the bottom-up, ethnic, and social aspects of Xinjiang’s conflict phenomenon. This article raises questions and concerns about framing the 2009 event from an ethnic and social standpoint. The authors combine conflict studies with a longue durée historical analysis to argue that multiple dimensions and the intersections of these dimensions constitute the 2009 Urumqi uprising. Present conflict is placed against a backdrop of unequal Chinese state policies with Xinjiang. The authors then forward a Uyghur perspective underpinned by peace and conflict studies concepts. The conclusion recommends conflict prevention strategies by urging the Government of the People’s Republic of China to take ownership of the consequences of its policies and the broken contracts with Uyghur minorities in Xinjiang.

Global Trade and Commodity Finance: The Next Emerging Securitization Asset Class?

There was approximately $18 trillion of cross-border trade in 2012. The volume of commodity trade is directly correlated with world population and generally retains a share of approximately 30% of total trade. Historically, commodities recover faster than any other sector in an economic crisis. Commodity trade finance is done in U.S. dollars and generally refers to three “families” of commodities: 1) energy, 2) metals and mining, and 3) “softs,” including grain, cotton, and various tropical products (e.g., palm oil and sugar). Critically, commodity trade finance focuses on logistics and not speculation. The commodities have already been sold, import and export letters of credit are normally established, and hedging and insurance are typically arranged. Relatively low-margin commodity trade financing has largely shifted from banks to capital markets as banks have been subject increasingly stringent leverage and liquidity coverage ratios. Withholding taxes, local taxes, and local bankruptcy laws are important factors in the planning of a multi-jurisdictional commodity financing transaction. Fraud risk, mitigated by strong client knowledge, is the biggest risk in commodity trade finance, followed by operational risk, especially involving export and import letters of credit; market risk, which can arise from transportation delays or broken contracts but can be mitigated through commodity hedging and advance ratios; country risk, which can be mitigated through hedging or insurance; and credit risk, which is mitigated by short tenors and the marketability of the underlying collateral.

Broken Contracts and Hidden Partnerships: Theory and Experiment

Previous research indicates that unenforceable informal contracts (or commitments) promote trust and reciprocity. Nonetheless, while such contracts may benefit existing exchange, in dynamic environments they may also hinder one’s willingness to explore newly emerging Pareto efficient opportunities. This issue arises in both business and social contexts, and includes industry non-compete agreements as well as personal relationship commitment decisions. We report data from an experiment using a novel three-person trust game where, in different treatments, different players are able to communicate with each other. We find that when, between the point of commitment and the point of decision, no new information is received regarding the expected value of commitment, then people overwhelmingly decide in accord with their informal contracts and avoid exploring potentially Pareto improving opportunities. However, when new information arises that reduces the relative value of commitment, and when this occurs following the commitment but before the decision, then people are significantly more likely to deviate from their informal contract and pursue a Pareto improvement. Further, we observe a “contingency effect” where the likelihood with which people follow an informal commitment declines with the number of contingencies that must occur in order for the contract to be realized. Finally, none of the theories of lying aversion that we explore are able fully to explain our data.

What does and should influence the number of lawyers?

Before we can ask whether there are too many lawyers we must answer several preliminary questions: whom do we consider lawyers, and what does and should influence their number? The term ‘lawyer’, w...

Informed consent: A broken contract

As researchers find more uses for data, informed consent has become a source of confusion. Something has to change.

It takes two to tango

Introduction The IT outsourcing, industry landscape is dotted with broken contracts - results of unsuccessful client-vendor (C-V) partnerships. Approximately 78% C-V partnerships fail in the long term, inflicting high transition costs on clients. The recent economic downturn has strined C-V partnerships further. Despite the criticality of this issue, there is a relative lack of efforts to understand the issues leading to failed partnerships. We discuss these issues in light of the clients' onus towards improving the longevity of C-V partnerships. We adopt a two-pronged approach. First, we try to identify the client characteristics that influence their potential to forge a long-term C-V partnership. To that extent, we discuss a partnership maturity curve (PMC), which categorizes clients into three dynamic stages, and predicts their potential for developing mature partnerships based on their outsourcing objectives and their fit with vendors' capabilities (see Figure 1). Second, we try to understand vendors' perspective on the issue. We interviewed 21 executives in nine established IT-outsourcing vendors in India. It has been recommended that vendors' perspective is critical to understanding C-V partnerships. Vendors highlighted an interesting mix of their own as well as client-generated issues, which we discuss in light of the client dynamics identified by PMC, to propse guidelines for clients interested in developing successful C-V partnerships. The study confirms existing belief that improving the longevity of C-V partnerships requires relational investments from clients. We identify various areas for clients to make such investments.

The Right to Strike under UK Law: Not Much More than a Slogan?: Metrobus v Unite The Union * [2009] EWCA Civ 829

Under UK law, the statutory provisions which permit the organisation of industrial action and participation in such action are framed in terms of immunities from the tortious and criminal liability that would otherwise attach. For that reason, the existence of a right to strike in this country has sometimes been disputed. In some quarters, the view has persisted that the wording of the legislation reflects the fact that industrial action is an interference with the employer's ‘natural’ right to manage. As Lord Denning famously stated in 1979, ‘Parliament granted immunities to the leaders of trade unions, it did not give them any rights. It did not give them the right to break the law or to do wrong by inducing people to break contracts. It only gave them immunity if they did.’1 Arguing against this view, others have suggested that the negative protection afforded by the statutory immunities ought to be regarded as equivalent to the positive protection of the right to strike found in other jurisdictions; that the choice to frame the law in terms of statutory immunities, rather than rights, was down simply to a technique of drafting.2

Incorporating Ethical and Trust-based Behaviour into Economics: A Transaction Cost Exploration

This paper explores ethical activity within a transaction cost (TC) framework. It discusses the theoretical and practical links between TC economisation and ethical and trust-based behaviour. By engendering a climate of trust at the micro/firm level, ethical behaviour can reduce TCs associated with monitoring and protection against broken contracts. At the macro/societal level, considerations such as stakeholders’ increasing ethical expectations, may also have TC implications. To distinguish these latter TCs from those at the more micro level, the paper terms them social transaction costs (STCs). While it might be possible to internalise TCs to achieve economisation, STCs cannot be reduced through internalisation.

Significance of internalization factors for Singapore transnational construction corporations

Singapore Transnational Construction Corporations (STCCs) are engaged in foreign value‐added construction‐related activities in foreign markets. A survey was undertaken to assess the significant factors that serve as reasons for STCCs to benefit from their internalization advantages. The protection of the reputation of the firm and the quality of service to clients were the two related and more important reasons for internalization. STCCs with greater international presence also stressed on avoiding the costs of broken contracts and ensuing litigations as an incentive for internalization. Regardless of the size, years of international experience, or whether specialized or diversified, STCCs viewed the ranking order of seventeen internalization factors to be significantly the same. Besides controlling costs, managers of STCCs will do well by guaranteeing the quality of works to foreign clients to maintain and enhance further the reputation of the firm and contribute positively to the Singapore brand name.

DEVISING A TRUST MODEL FOR MULTI-AGENT INTERACTIONS USING CONFIDENCE AND REPUTATION

In open environments in which autonomous agents can break contracts, computational models of trust have an important role to play in determining who to interact with and how interactions unfold. To this end, we develop such a trust model, based on confidence and reputation, and show how it can be concretely applied, using fuzzy sets, to guide agents in evaluating past interactions and in establishing new contracts with one another.

A LEARNING-ENABLED INTEGRATIVE TRUST MODEL FOR E-MARKETS

Existing e-markets presume no deception from agents or else they employ simple mechanisms to counteract deception. However, the reality shows that agents in e-markets can either cheat or break contracts due to higher benefits elsewhere, which is similar to what we find in humanity in general. Accordingly, the notion of trust in human society should be implemented in e-markets. Most of the existing research on trust is modeled theoretically from different views, and hence it is not easy to deploy them in e-markets due to the naturally non-computable essence of trust. However, current computable trust mechanisms, such as those used in eBay and Nextag, uniformly manipulate trust involved in all trading, resulting in complaints about non-differentiated experience. On the other hand, a computable trust model can help the formation of coalitions in e-markets and increase market competition. In this paper, we present a simple heuristic trust model absorbing the predominant views of trust with which agents in e-markets can better evaluate possible trading partners before trading processes take place. In this model, trust is characterized by the properties of being computable, individualized, evolutional, represented by scores, and extendable to the computation of coalition trust.

Takeovers: Their Causes and Consequences

Economic analysis and evidence indicate that the market for corporate control is benefiting shareholders, society, and the corporate form of organization. The value of transactions in this market ran at a record rate of about $180 billion per year in 1985 and 1986, 47 percent above the 1984 record of $122 billion. The gains to shareholders from these transactions have been huge. The gains to selling firm shareholders from mergers and acquisition activity in the ten-year period 1977-86 total $346 billion (in 1986 dollars). The gains to buying firm shareholders are harder to estimate, and no one to my knowledge has done so as yet, but my guess is that they will add at least another $50 billion to the total. These gains, to put them in perspective, equal 51 percent of the total cash dividends (valued in 1986 dollars) paid to investors by the entire corporate sector in the past decade. These corporate control transactions and the restructurings that often accompany them are frequently wrenching events in the lives of those linked to the involved organizations: the managers, employees, suppliers, customers and residents of surrounding communities. Restructurings usually involve major organizational change (such as shifts in corporate strategy) to meet new competition or market conditions, increased use of debt, and a flurry of recontracting with managers, employees, suppliers and customers. This activity sometimes results in expansion of resources devoted to certain areas and at other times in contractions involving plant closings, layoffs of top-level and middle managers, staff and production workers, and reduced compensation. Those threatened by the changes that restructuring brings about argue that corporate restructuring is damaging the American economy, damaging the morale and productivity of organizations, and pressuring executives to manage for the short-term. Further, they hold that the value restructuring creates does not come from increased efficiency and productivity; instead, the gains come from lower tax payments, broken contracts with managers, employees and others, and mistakes in valuation by inefficient capital markets. Since the benefits are illusory and the costs are real, they argue, takeover activity should be restricted. The controversy has been accompanied by strong pressure on regulators and legislatures to enact restrictions that would curb activity in the market for corporate control. Dozens of congressional bills in the last several years have proposed new restrictions on takeovers, but none have passed as of this writing. The Business Roundtable, composed of the chief executive officers of the 200 largest corporations in the country, has pushed hard for restrictive legislation. Within the past several years the legislatures of New York, New Jersey, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Illinois, Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio, Indiana and Minnesota have passed antitakeover laws. The Federal Reserve Board implemented new restrictions in early 1987 on the use of debt in certain takeovers. In all the controversy over takeover activity, it is often forgotten that only 40 (an all-time record) out of the 3,300 takeover transactions in 1986 were hostile tender offers. There were 110 voluntary or negotiated tender offers (unopposed by management) and the remaining 3,100-plus deals were also voluntary transactions agreed to by management, although this simple classification is misleading since many of the voluntary transactions would not occur absent the threat of hostile takeover. A major reason for the current outcry is that in recent years mere size alone has disappeared as an effective takeover deterrent, and the managers of many of our largest and least efficient corporations now find their jobs threatened by disciplinary forces in the capital markets. The market for corporate control is creating large benefits for shareholders and for the economy as a whole by loosening control over vast amounts of resources and enabling them to move more quickly to their highest-valued use. This is a healthy market in operation, on both the takeover side and the divestiture side, and it is playing an important role in helping the American economy adjust to major changes in competition and regulation of the past decade.

Broken contract

Broken contract

Incentives to Perform, or Break Contracts

Journal Article Incentives to Perform, or Break Contracts Get access Donald Harris, BCL, MA, LL M Donald Harris, BCL, MA, LL M Director of the Centre for Socio-Legal Studies Oxford Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Current Legal Problems, Volume 45, Issue Part_2, 1992, Pages 29–47, https://doi.org/10.1093/clp/45.Part_2.29 Published: 01 December 1992

Les tribunaux royaux

The Royal Courts Since they constituted the great majority of the population, the appearances of peasants were frequent in courts dealing with criminal cases (such as, murder, serious assault, burglary and theft of goods above a certain value). Their presence in non-criminal cases, such as disputes about land, debt, broken contract etc., was much less common. This was because, even in the thirteenth century, legal proceedings were expensive, even for well-to-do peasants. Nevertheless, peasants sometimes contributed to a common purse in order to hire lawyers to bring cases in the king's courts against their lords. These cases dealt with matters such as freedom of status and tenure, excessive demands for rent or labour service, encroachment on common rights. After the Black Death a new situation arose. Members of the county gentry were appointed as Justices of the Peace. They dealt not only with matters of public order but also with wage rates, prices and measures. Their justice was seen as an instrument in the hands of the gentry and against the interests of the peasantry, as the Rising of 1381 clearly showed.

Carey and New England Petroleum Corporation v. National Oil Corporation and The Libyan Arab Republic

Sovereign immunity — Foreign States and government-owned corporations — Contracts for sale of oil between Libyan Government-owned corporation and foreign companies — Termination as a result of political measures by Libyan Government — Whether Libya and Libyan Government-owned corporation entitled to sovereign immunity — Whether actions having direct effect within the United States — Whether Libya amenable to suit under Act for allegedly inducing its national oil corporation to break contracts in order to comply with oil embargo — Whether Libya and its oil corporation amenable to suit for termination of contract between plaintiffs and oil concessionaire allegedly arising from nationalization — State responsibility — For revocation of concessions — Nationalization as a sovereign act — The law of the United States

Carey and New England Petroleum Corporation v. National Oil Corporation and The Libyan Arab Republic

164Sovereign immunity — Foreign States and government-owned corporations — Contracts for sale of oil between Libyan Government-owned corporation and foreign companies — Termination as a result of political measures by Libyan Government — Whether Libya and Libyan Government-owned corporation entitled to sovereign immunity — Whether actions having direct effect within the United States — Whether Libya amenable to suit under Act for allegedly inducing its national oil corporation to break contracts in order to comply with oil embargo — Whether Libya and its oil corporation amenable to suit for termination of contract between plaintiffs and oil concessionaire allegedly arising from nationalization — State responsibility — For revocation of concessions — Nationalization as a sovereign act — The law of the United States