TY - UNPD A1 - Höffler, Felix A1 - Bechthold, Stefan T1 - An economic analysis of trade-secret protection in buyer-seller relationships N2 - The economic analysis of trade-secret protection has traditionally focused on the interests of companies to conceal information from competitors in order to gain a competitive advantage through trade-secret law. This has neglected cases in which the interest is not in concealing information from competitors, but from trading partners. We investigate the social efficiency effects of trade-secret protection in such cases. Many results from economic theory state that asymmetric information (and therefore also its legal protection) is socially undesirable since it leads to inefficient trade. At the same time, protecting private information might create incentives for socially desirable investments. We model this trade-off in a simple buyer-seller model and …nd that, indeed, trade-secret protection has ambiguous welfare effects. However, a simple, informationally undemanding rule, conditioning the applicability of legal protection on a minimum investment by the informed party to conceal the information, helps to apply trade-secret protection only when it increases welfare. This rationalizes important features of current legal practice. T3 - WHU – Working Paper Series in Economics - WP 08/04 KW - Offenlegung von Informationen KW - Disclosure of information KW - "Hold-up"-Probleme KW - Hold-up problems KW - Geschäftsgeheimnisse KW - Trade secrets Y1 - 2017 UR - https://opus4.kobv.de/opus4-whu/frontdoor/index/index/docId/516 UR - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:hbz:992-opus4-5166 PB - WHU - Otto Beisheim School of Management CY - Vallendar ER -