The Structure of Enterprise Law: Interrelationships among contracts, markets, and laws in the bargaining structure of the firm

The firm is an ongoing joint project requiring both financial and human capital. Like other joint projects, the firm cannot maximize added value without achieving an efficient incentive bargain among the indispensable capital providers, i.e., shareholders and creditors as the monetary capital providers, and management and employees as the human capital providers. To stimulate efficient incentive bargaining at the firm level and, consequently, to enhance the efficiency of the whole economy, I will propose a new concept, the “enterprise law,” and define it as any law which will affect the incentive bargaining of the firm. We will draw the whole picture of incentive bargaining at the firm by focusing on the interrelationships and complementarities among contracts, markets, and laws; thereafter we will present some legislative policy implications.