The contours of contract theory as a eld are dicult to dene. Many would argue that contract theory is a subset of Game Theory which is dened by the notion that one party to the game (typically called the principal) is given all of the bargaining power and so can make a take-it-or-leave-it oer to the other party or parties (i.e., the agent(s)). In fact, the techniques for screening contracts were largely developed by pure game theorists to study allocation mechanisms and game design. But then again, carefully dened, everything is a subset of game theory.