The first point to be made is that there is extensive use of safeguards by client firms to minimize the possibility of being the victim of opportunistic behaviour and hence the need to rely on trust. There is an Italian saying which captures much of the sentiment: 'It is good to trust but it is better not to trust.' First, client firms prefer to solicit tenders from a minimum of three subcontractors in order to preclude an opportunistic distortion of production costs. They also prefer to split an order between a minimum of two subcontractors so that if difficulties develop with one it is possible to switch to the other. This practice may, of course, entail a loss of potential scale economies depending on batch size.

Diego Gambetta, Trust - Making and Breaking…, loc. 2573