The Conduct of Economics: The Example of Fisher Body and General Motors

The events leading to the acquisition of Fisher Body by General Motors (GM) were said by Benjamin Klein, in a paper published in 1998, to be “[p]erhaps the most extensively discussed example in the economic literature of a hold-up due to the presence of specific investments ” (Klein, 1998, p. 241). Joel Trachtman, discussing opportunistic behavior in 1997, refers to the “classic example of Fisher Body and General Motors”