Careers in arm’s-length contracting: evidence from the Chilean wine-grape market

Abstract This paper investigates the presence of career and promotion-based incentives in the context of arm’s-length contracting between wineries and independent wine-grape farmers. We hypothesise that long-term contracts represent a stage in a farmer’s career after a series of short-term contracts. We develop a conceptual framework to frame the interaction between explicit performance incentives and implicit career incentives arising from the possibility of promotion to a long-term contract, conditional on wineries learning a farmer’s potential for superior-quality production. Based on data from Chilean wine-grape farmers, we find evidence suggesting that implicit market-based incentives, usually studied in the context of employment contracts, are also important in arm’s-length contracts used in procurement of farm output.