Compatibility and Bundling with Generalist and Specialist Firms

I analyze compatibility and bundling choices when one generalist firm offering both components of a system competes against two specialist firms each supplying one component only (but not the same one). I show that the generalist firm may have an incentive to choose incompatibility or engage in pure bundling when one component is less differentiated than the other. In this case, the system is more differentiated than the relatively undifferentiated component, and so under incompatibility the specialist firm that produces the undifferentiated component will relax price competition. This may result in higher profits for some of the competing firms.     

Housing Rental Contracts and Adverse Selection with an Application to the Rent-Own Decision

A model of rental housing is developed in which landlords cannot observe the utilization rate of their tenants. As a result of this imperfect information, an adverse selection problem exists where high utilization households have an incentive to conceal their type in order to obtain more favorable contract terms. Consequently, the market equilibrium must satisfy a self-selection constraint, which imposes certain restrictions on the set of contracts that will be offered by landlords. These restrictions are examined in detail, and their implications for a household's decision to rent or own its housing are derived.     

因子分析法在不同所有制工业企业经济发展评价中的应用

基于《中国统计年鉴》(2010)的数据,采用因子分析法对中国31个省市的国有、私营、外商投资工业企业经济发展情况予以统计排序,并进行了区域内部和区域之间的比较研究。分析结果显示,区域内部国有、私营、外商投资工业企业经济的发展存在不协调性;各地区工业企业经济的发展存在不均衡性,国有、私营和外商投资工业企业的经济发展水平符合中国区域经济东强西弱的总体特征;东、中、西部国有、私营和外商投资工业企业经济发展呈现出各自的特征。     

THE QUALITY OF INFORMATION AND INCENTIVES FOR EFFORT*

We study the relationship between the precision of information about the performance of an agent in a market, and the incentives this agent has for exerting effort to produce high quality. We show that this relationship can be nonmonotonic. There exists an efficient plausible equilibrium that induces a threshold beyond which any further improvement in the precision of information weakens the agent's incentive to produce high quality. Accordingly, both very accurate and very inaccurate signals about the agent's performance may destroy its incentive to exert effort. A few applications of this result are discussed.     

不完全信息与网络产业激励性规制改革

规制体制改革的核心是解决信息不对称下的最优激励问题，规制体制设计的关键就是要设计有效的激励合约，为企业提供适当的激励以达到成本效率，从激励角度看，价格上限规制的效率最高，竞争是重要的激励性体制，网络产业竞争体制形成的关键是约束在位运营商排斥竞争行为和建立有效的互联资费政策。     

Platform Competition With Cash-Back Rebates Under No Surcharge Rules

We analyze competing strategic platforms setting fees to a local monopolist merchant and cash-back rebates to end users, when the merchant may not surcharge platforms’ customers, a rule imposed by some credit card networks. Each platform has an incentive to gain transactions by increasing the spread between its merchant fee and user rebate above its rival's spread. This incentive yields non-existence of a pure strategy equilibrium in many natural environments. In some circumstances, a mixed strategy equilibrium exists where platforms choose fee structures that induce merchants to accept only one platform with equal probability, a form of monopolistic market allocation.     

纵向一体化与联合所有权——通用一费希尔公司收购案例研究

纵向一体化可以很好地解决物质资本的专用性问题,然而对人力资本专用性造成的“套牢”无能为力。通过降低交易双方对一般性投资的激励,从而提高专用性投资的激励,联合所有权使得“套牢”的收益最小而成本最高。因此,联合所有权不仅可以解决物质资本专用性问题,也是解决人力资本套牢问题的有效途经。     

产权改革与体制低效的“反公地悲剧”现象分析

渐进主义模式有利于社会变革的可控性，但它只能完成外围容易实现的改革目标。农村和城市经济改革中已经获得“有限”市场自由的各类经济主体与正在转型中的管理体制代理者之间存在的激励不相容，使我国的经济改革呈现出了“不关心”、“不作为”和寻租等严重的“反公地悲剧”问题。要彻底突破目前陷于停滞的改革困境。就亟须克服渐进主义思维的惯性，从土地、国企和体制等改革的实践难题着手，中央政府层面的“项层设计”应该是唯一的选择。     

COMPATIBILITY INCENTIVES OF A LARGE NETWORK FACING MULTIPLE RIVALS*

Under network effects, we analyze when a firm with the largest market share of installed‐base customers prefers incompatibility with smaller rivals that are themselves compatible. With incompatibility, consumers realize that intra‐network competition makes the rivals' network more aggressive than a single‐firm network in adding customers. Consequently, under incompatibility the unique equilibrium can entail tipping away from the largest firm whatever its market share. The largest firm is more likely to prefer incompatibility as its share rises (above fifty per cent is necessary) or the potential to add consumers falls; the number of rivals and strength of network effects have ambiguous implications.     

高级管理人员激励契约研究

本文首次通过收集上市公司披露的高级管理人员激励契约，对我国现阶段高级管理人员激励契约的现状和存在的问题进行了分析和研究。研究发现：我国上市公司中高级管理人员职责不清，容易出现高级管理人员自己给自己制定报酬、考核业绩的现象；我国高级管理人员业绩评价主要依赖财务指标（净利润、利润总额、净资产收益率），非财务指标与主观评价指标在高级管理人员业绩评价中使用较少；高级管理人员的业绩标准主要是董事会制定的预算指标：高级管理人员业绩评价指标的确定比较简单，往往没有考虑高级管理人员操纵会计指标的可能性。以及不可控因素对评价指标的影响。     

The incentive effects of monitoring under alternative compensation schemes

This paper examines the marginal incentive effect of monitoring under share and wage payment schemes, using various assumptions concerning the risk preferences of workers and the informational content of monitoring signals. The direction of this effect is shown to depend critically on the set of assumptions employed; furthermore, the conditions necessary to generate a positive response of labor effort to monitoring may be restrictive and intuitively unappealing. A positive incentive effect is most easily guaranteed (under both compensation schemes) if monitoring produces an accurate signal of effort with a probability which depends on the level of monitoring intensity. Implications for the argument that the problem of monitoring dictates efficient organizational form are briefly explored.     

The role of technical expertise in firm governance structure: evidence from chief financial officer contractual incentives

We provide evidence that the presence of technical expertise in firm governance structure reduces reliance on contractual incentives to control the potential agency problem for executives whose responsibilities require specialized knowledge. Specifically, we find that firms with financial expertise in the form of a board finance committee, or a chief executive officer with a financial background, tend to use lower levels of incentive‐based compensation for their chief financial officers. Our findings suggest financial experts provide stronger oversight and/or direction with regard to firm financial policies and strategies, thereby allowing firms to reduce reliance on incentive compensation. Our study provides insight into the role of technical expertise and board committees in firm governance, and into the benefits of common functional expertise within top management teams. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Pricing with customer recognition

This article studies the dynamic effects of behaviour-based price discrimination and customer recognition in a duopolistic market where the distribution of consumers' preferences is discrete. Consumers are myopic and firms are forward looking. In the static and first-period equilibrium firms choose prices with mixed strategies. When price discrimination is allowed, forward-looking firms have an incentive to avoid customer recognition, thus the probability that both will have positive first-period sales decreases as they become more patient. Furthermore, an asymmetric equilibrium sometimes exists, yielding a 100–0 division of the first-period sales. As a whole, price discrimination is bad for profits but good for consumer surplus and welfare.     

论我国建筑企业的激励模式

分析了产业技术特点对企业激励模式的影响，针对建筑业不同于其他产业的技术特点，建筑企业的激励模式呈现出了不同的特征。对于建筑企业中生产型从业人员，应采用以计时、计件制为主的短期激励模式；对于管理型和技术型从业人员采用以固定激励和收益性激励为主的中期激励模式；对于管理密集、技术密集的工程项目管理公司，由于企业的收益主要取决于人力资本的贡献，应主要采取以收益性和权益性激励为主的长期激励模式。     

激励扭曲与基于知识合约的团队生产力

对企业团队生产力的传统激励模式主要是基于委托人既定条件下的控制权安排展开的，但由此造成的不确定性导致了激励扭曲，存在成员监督条件下的隐性激励合同虽然有利于减少这种扭曲，但通过建立一种包括团队成员知识共享与创造并参与收益分享的知识性合约，则可以有效解决自我激励的难题，从而提高团队生产力。     

Switching Costs in Vertically Related Markets

In the presence of switching costs, firms are ofteninterested in expanding current market shares toexploit their customer base in the future. However, ifthe product is sold by retailers, manufacturers mayface the problem of extracting too much surplus fromthe retailer. If this happens, then the latter has notan incentive to build a subscriber base. This paperwould like to connect two streams in the literature,on switching costs and vertical restraintsrespectively. An upstream–downstream duopoly model ispresented to analyse the mutual incentive for firms toenter into particular trading relationships. Whenswitching costs are high, then integrated structuresare predicted. On the other hand, when lock in effectsare not too relevant, mixed structures withindependent and integrated firms emerge as anequilibrium in growing industries. The results arediscussed with reference to the UK mobiletelecommunications industry.     

Architectural innovation in product development through early supplier integration

The paper explains how an important opportunity exists to pro-actively integrate suppliers at an early stage in the concept exploration and definition stages of product development. Research suggests that the concept of architectural innovation can be extended so that product features are matched with the associated specialized technical skills of partners in the development team.
In addition to the establishment of integrated product teams, key enablers include: long-term commitment to suppliers; co-location; joint responsibility for design and configuration control; seamless information flow; and retaining flexibility in the definition of system configuration. Important contributing factors include: supplier-capability-enhancing investments; target costing; and incentive mechanisms. To promote innovative outcomes in military and government programmes, attention is drawn to the importance of governments championing closely-knit customer-supplier relationships.
Firms can build enduring competitive strength by leveraging the specialized knowledge bases of their supplier networks. Two case-studies provide lessons to improve current approaches to the creation of long-term partnerships, or strategic alliances, with suppliers.     

Delegation of information verification

An agent may manipulate information when transmitting it to the principal. A direct response to this problem is to verify the information. The paper explores a situation where the principal engages in information verification herself or alternatively delegates it to the agent. The paper finds that delegated verification can be optimal if the agent has to expend costly effort to acquire information before verifying it. Delegated verification promotes the agent's incentive for information acquisition. The paper also finds that delegated verification is more likely to be optimal if the agent is more biased.     

Top management team incentive heterogeneity,strategic investment behavior,and performance: A contingency theory of incentive alignment

Research summary : We develop and test a contingency theory of the influence of top management team (TMT) performance‐contingent incentives on manager–shareholder interest alignment. Our results support our theory by showing that although TMTs engage in significantly higher levels of acquisition investment when their average incentive levels increase, investors' responses to those large investments are generally negative. More importantly, however, we further find that within‐TMT incentive heterogeneity conditions that effect, such that investors evaluate TMTs' large acquisition investments more positively as the variance in those top managers' incentive values increases. Thus, within‐TMT incentive heterogeneity appears to increase manager–shareholder interest alignment, in the context of large acquisition investments. Managerial summary : We find that as the average value of TMTs' incentives increase, relative to their total pay, they invest more in acquisitions and investors' respond negatively to the announcement of those deals. However, we further show that investors respond more positively to acquisitions announced by TMTs whose members' incentive values vary (some TMT members hold higher incentives and others hold lower). Results imply that when TMT members hold differing incentives levels, they approach investments from divergent perspectives, scrutinize those investments more heavily, and make better decisions, relative to TMTs with similar incentives. They also suggest that boards seeking tighter manager–shareholder interest alignment may benefit from introducing variance into TMT members' incentive structures, as doing so appears to create divergent preferences that can improve team decision making. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Effects of Cross-Ownership and League Policies Across Sports Leagues Within a City

Since prior research suggests that some economic competition exists between teams in different sports leagues, economic competition and ownership structure can affect an owner’s incentive to invest in talent. This paper uses a theoretical model to examine the differences in owners’ incentives to invest in talent when they are operating as monopolists, as duopolists, or as a cross-owned team. Our model shows that economic competition results in an ambiguous level of investment compared to that of a monopolist. A firm that engages in cross-ownership will invest less in talent compared to a duopolist, but the difference in profits is ambiguous. League policies are studied and are shown to affect the quality of teams in other leagues.