If a producer's reputation with potential buyers is of great interest, the producer has reason to produce higher-quality goods even though there might be no easily specified contractual definition of quality. Hence, as in the literature on extracontractual aspects of business dealings (for example, Macauley 1963; Bohnet, Frey, and Huck 2001), producers and buyers would be in a partially cooperative relationship rather than the nearly adversarial relationship of the Soviet economy.

XREF: Connects to reputation economics and the broader literature on extracontractual business dealings, including Macauley, Bohnet, Frey, and Huck.

Russell Hardin, Trust and Trustworthiness, loc. 842