Considering a broad definition for service contracts (beyond web services and software, e.g. airlinetickets and insurance policies), we tackle the challenges of building a high performance broker inwhich contracts are both specified and queried through their temporal behavior. The temporaldimension, in conjunction with traditional relational attributes, enables our system to better ...

The research in this paper is focused on enhancing existing knowledge in cost estimation models at the bidding stage of service support contracts. The difficulty of this task lies in the long lasting contracts, which in some cases may reach even 40 years. The paper first reports the existing knowledge through detailed review of literature. The paper studies different service support contracts a...

When do participants in a market have the incentive to enter into agreements that exclude potential entrants? This paper synthesizes, extends and illustrates the theory of exclusionary contracts. In a model of incumbent contracts with downstream buyers, a “Chicago benchmark”yields no incentive for exclusionary long term contracts. Departures from the benchmark in each of three directions yield ...

This paper focuses on client-service interactions distinguishing between three phases: negotiate, commit and execute. The participants negotiate their behaviours, and if an agreement is reached they commit and start an execution which is guaranteed to respect the interaction scheme agreed upon. These ideas are materialised through a calculus of contracts enriched with semiringbased constraints,...

One upstream and two downstream firms are involved in a vertically related industry. Under observable contracts, aware of both their own rival's input prices. However, under an unobservable contract, only know price unaware rival’s price. We demonstrate vertical separation integration the contracts. focus on methods: linear tariffs two-part tariffs. With asymmetric costs contracts increases con...