CAN MARKET-BASED CONTRACTS SUBSTITUTE FOR ALLIANCES IN HIGH-TECHNOLOGY MARKETS

Most current research on technology alliances assumes that trading par tners are free to select an optimal governance structure, However, for international scientific research centres working with advanced techn ologies, the choices for industrial collaboration are often limited to short-term contracts, This research investigates whether in high tech nology settings, such short-term contracts can substitute for longer-t erm cooperative alliances, While the short-term transaction costs are high, the results suggest that, similar to alliances, certain market-b ased contracts do result in long-term learning and transferable firm-s pecific advantages.