Irreversible abatement investment under cost uncertainties: tradable emission permits and emissions charges

A major concern with tradable emission permits is that stochastic permit prices may reduce a firm’s incentive to invest in abatement capital or technologies relative to other policies such as a fixed emissions charge. However, under efficient permit trading, the permit price uncertainty is caused by abatement cost uncertainties which affect investment under both permit and charge policies. We develop a rational expectations general equilibrium model of permit trading and irreversible abatement investment to show how cost uncertainties affect investment under permits. We compare the resulting investment incentive with that under charges. After controlling for the assumption that random shocks affect the abatement cost linearly, we find that firms’ investment incentive decreases in cost uncertainties, but more so under emissions charges than under permits. Therefore, tradable permits in fact may help maintain firms’ investment incentive under uncertainty.     

股票期权风险承担激励、管理者权力与企业研发创新

以2006-2016年公布股票期权激励方案的上市公司为样本,探讨高管期权薪酬风险承担激励和管理者权力对企业研发创新的影响。研究表明,管理者期权薪酬风险承担激励和管理者权力均对企业研发创新具有促进作用;当二者同时存在时,期权薪酬激励与管理者权力之间会产生负向协同效应,反而会阻碍企业研发创新。其原因可能在于,管理者可以利用手中的权利影响薪酬合约制定过程而轻松获取租金,从而放弃风险较高的研发创新活动。研究结论丰富了企业创新、管理者权力和高管股权激励相关研究,对于提高企业创新能力、改进公司治理具有一定借鉴意义。     

CEO调节焦点、绿色创新与企业绩效研究

在国内外研究的基础上,构建了特质—行为—绩效关系模型。选取227位CEO为研究对象,通过构建结构方程模型,实证分析了CEO调节焦点、绿色创新与企业绩效之间的关系。结果表明,CEO促进型焦点对企业绩效具有正向影响,而预防型焦点具有负向影响;绿色产品创新、绿色工艺创新对企业绩效均有显著正向促进作用;绿色产品创新、绿色工艺创新在促进型焦点对企业绩效的影响中起部分中介作用。     

Principles versus principal: Reconciling norm compliance and shareholder value

This paper considers situations where an agent (say, a polluting firm's CEO) must allocate his nonobservable effort across two distinct tasks (say, revenue/market share enhancement and environmental stewardship), and where two principals (say, the firm's shareholders and an external stakeholder) hold diverging viewpoints on what the best allocation should be. Both characteristics of this context—multitasking and conflicting principals—are normally seen as obstacles to strengthening the agent's incentives. This paper proposes a simple arrangement, based on contingent monitoring and clawbacks, that can overcome these obstacles. Under this arrangement, the principals would end up coordinating their respective incentive schemes so that the agent considers his two tasks as complementary utility‐increasing activities. Applications to regulatory compliance, corporate social responsibility, and innovation management are briefly sketched.     

基于双重委托-代理的科研团队成员知识创新激励机制研究

采用双重委托-代理关系模型研究科研团队成员知识创新激励机制,强化主体创新参与意识和知识贡献精神。在团队知识创新个体成员角色划分的基础上,论述团队知识创新中的双重委托-代理关系,进而分析双重关系中的知识创新激励机制,并提出基于人力资本价值差异的激励措施。团队层面的委托-代理关系表明,个体成员的拟线性效用令有效努力水平与其收益独立分配,符合科斯定理的“行动有效,与利益分配无关”的思想;个体层面的委托-代理关系分析表明,实施基于人力资本价值的差异化激励合约,其数值模拟和参数分析结果验证了知识贡献者的产出份额、努力程度以及确定性等价收入明显得到优化。     

A simple explanation of the relative performance evaluation puzzle

We study a simple moral hazard model in which two risk-neutral owners establish incentives for their risk-averse managers to exert effort. Because the probability distributions over output realizations depend on a common aggregate shock, optimal contracts make the compensation of each manager contingent on own performance but also on a performance benchmark—the performance of the other firm. If the marginal return of effort depends on the aggregate state, optimal contracts are not monotonically decreasing in the performance benchmark. This provides a simple explanation of the Relative Performance Evaluation (RPE) Puzzle—the documented lack of a negative relationship between CEO compensation and comparative performance measures, such as industry or market performance. Our simple model can also explain one-sided RPE—the documented tendency to insulate a CEO's rewards from bad luck, but not from good luck. We clarify that our results are robust in several dimensions and we discuss other applications of our findings.     

Can industry regulators learn collusion structures from information-efficient asset markets?

This note combines a dynamic industrial organization model, in which an industry is subject to exogenous processes of market-size and collusion structure, with a consumption-based asset pricing model for the shares in the industry’s firms. Three main findings emerge for our model under the assumption of information-efficient asset markets. First, the volatility of a firm’s share price is exclusively driven by the volatility of the industry’s market-size. Second, the volatility of a firm’s price-dividend ratio is exclusively driven by the volatility of the industry’s collusion structure whereby high (resp. low) ratios indicate less (resp. more) collusion. Third, for non-volatile collusion structures the price-dividend ratio is constant across different collusion structures.     

Dynamic control of a monopolist’s product and process innovation with reference quality

ABSTRACT

Our main purpose is to investigate the dynamic control problem of a monopolist’s product and process innovation under reference quality. The main features of this article are: (i) a monopolist dealing with customer behaviour in the spirit of the principle of behaviour economics determines the product price, and carries out the activities of product and process innovation; (ii) the consumers’ demand depends on price, product quality and reference quality, and adopts an additive separable demand function form. Our main results show that under the cases of the monopolist optimum and the social planner optimum, (i) there exists an unique stable, which is a saddle-point steady-state equilibrium; (ii) the change rates of the monopolist’s investments in product and process innovation are increasing with the reference quality, while the monopolist’s steady-state investments in product and process innovation are decreasing with the reference quality; (iii) as the memory parameter increases with other parameters kept constant, it is very likely that the monopolist’s investment in process innovation be greater than the investment in product innovation; and (iv) the social incentive towards both investments in product and process innovation is always larger than the private incentive characterizing the profit-seeking monopolist.     

An Empirical Analysis of the Effects on Firms’ Economic Performance of Implementing Environmental Management Systems

This paper investigates whether environmental management system (EMS) implementation influences a firm’s value added, one of the indices of economic performance. Because it is expected that EMS implementation increases a firm’s value added through an increase in demand and an improvement in productivity, a simple model to identify how these effects influence a firm’s value added is developed and is empirically investigated using panel data for Japanese manufacturing firms in the period 1996–2007. The main findings are as follows. For the full sample, EMS implementation increases a firm’s value added through an increase in demand and improvement in productivity. Among these firms, however, the positive effect of the implementation through an increase in demand mainly exists for export-oriented firms. At the industry level, the effects of EMS implementation vary among different industries. These results empirically prove that there are plural paths for EMS implementation to improve a firm’s economic performance.     

Ownership structure,board composition and the market for corporate control in the UK: an empirical analysis

This paper analyses the board composition and ownership structures of a sample of companies that have been acquired and those of a matching control sample that have not. We find significant governance differences between acquired firms and the control sample. Firms with the following characteristics were more likely to be acquired: they had the same person acting as CEO and chair, a higher proportion of non-executive directors, larger institutional shareholdings and higher director shareholdings. An analysis of small firms also found evidence of higher CEO shareholdings. We also find that treating all take-overs as a single group leads to a model mis-specification which does not identify the incentive effects of board and CEO shareholdings present in non-hostile acquisitions. These results are consistent with two agency-derived hypotheses, financial incentives and effective monitoring. We also find that targets exhibit lower growth potential but do not have worse accounting performance.     

The employment contract when the firm can utilize a free resource

The output of a free resource, like Open Source programming or basic research, may influence the firm’s revenue by reducing costs or through market interaction. Under moral hazard, if the principal determines how much to utilize the free resource, he will utilize it more, profits are higher and the agent’s effort is lower than when the agent makes the decision. Contrary to the standard result, the incentive coefficient is increasing in the variance of the free resource’s output. Utilization of the free resource and the agent’s effort are always substitutes.     

董事会治理与企业技术创新:理论与实证

本文在代理理论的框架内考察了公司治理之董事会治理与企业技术创新投入的关系,并基于2004-2008年501家中国上市公司的数据对此进行了实证研究。结果表明:1)董事会规模与企业技术创新投入存在不显著的负相关关系;2)独立董事占比与企业技术创新投入存在显著的正相关关系,独立董事占比较高的企业其技术创新投入要显著高于独立董事占比较低的企业;3)董事长与总经理两职分离的制度安排对企业技术创新投入有显著的积极影响,两职分离的企业其技术创新投入要显著高于两职合一的企业;4)董事会股权激励对企业技术创新存在积极影响,董事会股权激励水平越高,企业技术创新投入越多,但这种发现仅具有较低的统计显著性。     

员工股权激励对中小企业创新会产生补充的促进效应吗？

高管与核心技术员工作用于创新的不同过程,同时也是股权激励计划的主要激励对象,两者股权激励的互动效应对创新的影响值得探讨。选取2009—2015年成功实施股权激励的深A上市中小板与创业板公司为研究对象,考察员工股权激励对高管股权激励在中小企业创新中的影响及其作用机制。研究结果表明：实施股权激励计划能够显著增加企业研发投入与创新产出;相较于高管,核心技术员工股权激励强度越大,企业创新数量越多、质量越高;高管股权激励降低了创新转化效率。进一步地,融资支持效应和人才激励效应是员工股权激励补充促进创新的重要机制;代理成本在高管股权激励与研发投入关系中起遮掩作用。     

CEO权力强度与企业双元创新投入决策——市场化水平及内部控制的调节作用

如何选择合适的创新策略,是企业管理者面临的重大战略问题。以市场化水平和内部控制为调节变量,基于2014—2017年中证高新技术企业指数成分股数据,研究CEO权力强度与企业双元创新投入决策关系,结果发现：CEO权力强度促进企业创新投入;相较于利用式创新投入,结构权力对探索式创新投入的抑制效应更显著,所有制权力、专家权力和声誉权力对探索式创新投入的促进效应更显著;相较于探索式创新投入,市场化水平对CEO权力强度与利用式创新投入的调节效应更显著;相较于利用式创新投入,内部控制对CEO权力强度与探索式创新投入的调节效应更显著。结论拓展了CEO权力与双元创新研究领域,可为企业利用CEO权力调节双元创新投入水平提供实践指导。     

Proximity, knowledge integration and innovation: an agenda for agent-based studies

In this paper, we develop a theoretical model able to capture some of the main features that govern knowledge sharing and innovation. We pursue our target developing an agent-based model in which the social network of interactions is specified as a knowledge resource, and knowledge integration is seen as the process by which the resource can be applied to innovation. The results of the simulation exercises show that the initial architecture of acquaintance networks is a crucial factor for innovation. Innovating has proven to be more than simply equating endowments of initial skills with firm performance. In fact, the performance of the system showed high sensitivity to the arrangement of the firm’s initial location in the social network. Moreover, the way in which acquaintance networks were mobilized emerged as a key determinant of innovation patterns. The model presented here is a relatively theoretical, stylized model and we employ it to draw some general, albeit preliminary conclusions, while illustrating some of the theory relevant to the issues discussed. It is argued that the model might serve the purpose of setting an agenda for further research along this line of investigation—that is, knowledge integration patterns and firms partnerships formation.     

Do not change horses: specialist CEOs enhance innovation

This study examines the relation between specialist Chief Executive Officers(CEOs) and their firms’ future performance, particularly regarding innovation. While human capital theory predicts that firms should innovate better when their CEOs possess more human capital, this relationship has been hard to measure empirically. As a result, little is known about the role of individual CEOs on innovation performance. Using a unique dataset on CEO human capital characteristics for S&P 1500 firms between 1993 and 2010, we examine whether specialist CEOs with strong firm-specific human capital have a significant long-term influence on firm innovation. Our findings support the idea that specialist CEOs promote both a higher magnitude of innovation and higher quality innovation for their current firms. The evidence indicates that the specificity of CEO human capital matters in the context of innovation as a long-term firm outcome.     

公司治理与技术创新的相关性综述

公司治理决定了必要的创新资源供给,CEO激励、董事会及监事会设置等治理要素都会影响创新投入、创新方式及创新绩效。通过治理结构变革来推进技术创新,是增进企业活力、改善企业绩效的重要途径。近些年,公司治理与技术创新的相关性研究积累了丰硕的研究成果。采用文献梳理的方式,从公司治理的激励机制、监督机制、外部接管机制等方面综述了国内外相关研究成果,研究发现,现有文献的研究内容涵盖面广,研究结论多样;变量测量差异性大,研究方法较为单一;但现有文献尚存在以下不足:缺乏对影响机制的深入探讨;忽视创新主体——经营者的影响,对治理结构的"资源效应"重视不足。     

Influence of firm performance and gender on CEO compensation

In this article we continue the examination of top executive pay by comparing performance, total pay and the influence of CEO gender. We analyse compensation differences between male and female CEOs using nonparametric analysis. We calculate the potential compensation for each executive using two benchmarks. First, each executive's performance and compensation are evaluated relative to members of the same gender to produce a same-gender measure of under-compensation. Each executive's compensation is also benchmarked against the other gender's potential compensation, producing an other-gender measure of under-compensation. Together, both measures allow an analysis of the gender-specific potential salaries of each executive while controlling for performance. The approach is applied to a sample of male and female executives. The results indicate that women are under-compensated.     

CEO技术专长与企业技术资本积累——CEO过度自信的调节效应

以2015—2020年沪深A股上市公司为样本，实证检验CEO技术专长对企业技术资本积累的直接效应及CEO过度自信的调节效应。结果显示：CEO技术专长显著促进企业技术资本积累；CEO过度自信的调节效应较为显著；规模大且CEO实施股票期权激励的企业，CEO技术专长的直接效应、过度自信的调节效应明显高于规模小且CEO实施限制股票激励的企业；与民营企业相比，国有企业CEO技术专长的直接效应、CEO过度自信的调节效应更突出。     

Environmental regulation of technically inefficient firms

This paper presents a model in which a technically inefficient firm is responsible for the emissions of pollutants. We derive second-best regulatory schemes (tax and quota) assuming that the firm’s technical efficiency is unknown to the regulator.