Poaching and the Misappropriation of Information: Transaction Risks of Information Exchange

We address the concept of poaching, the risk that in any transactional relationship, information that is transferred between parties for purposes specified in the contract will deliberately be used by the receiving party for purposes outside the contract, to its own economic benefit, and to the detriment of the party that provided the information. We argue that this form of transactional risk, a component of transaction costs, is increasingly...