Many exchanges are governed by rather complicated contracts that explicitly denote dates, individuals, locations, prices, products, qualities, quantities, and contingencies for changing conditions. Transaction-cost economics has been quite successful in explaining the structure of these contracts. In particular, long-term contracts and vertical relationships have been shown to solve the contracting problems that arise in the presence of durable, transactionspecific assets. As the quote above suggests, Midwest farmers rely on farmland leases that are surprisingly simple. Contrary to focusing on why complex, long-term contracts exist, we ask the alternative and complementary question: Why do simple, short-term contracts arise when real-world contracting is costly?