The O‐ring theory of the firm

We develop an O‐ring production function characterized by specialization and division of labor and where shirking or negative shocks can have major adverse consequences. We show that when the principal can monitor individual output, the firm tends be large (potentially larger than first best), with a high degree of specialization and division of labor, weak incentives, and low pay as in traditional nonunion manufacturing. Moral hazard can only limit the size of the firm relative to the first best when the principal can only monitor team output, in which case the firm has the opposite characteristics.     

商业银行规模经济研究

规模经济作为社会化大生产的一种经济规律,与分工、专业化和协作水平密不可分。对于现代商业银行而言,尽管其经营形式是网点式分散的,但它实行一级法人体制,通过资金的纽带使各个网点结合成一个整体,这要求商业银行的经营必须达到一定的规模,才能提高效率,降低成本,实现其规模效益。文章从现代商业银行存在规模经营的必然性及其实现途径进行了研究。     

An Equilibrium Model Endogenizing the Emergence of a Dual Structure between the Urban and Rural Sectors

This paper presents a general equilibrium model which formalizes the trade-off between economies of specialization and transaction costs. The comparative statics, based on corner solutions, indicate that the general equilibrium will shift between several market structures as transaction efficiency is improved. Introducing a differential in transaction efficiency between the agricultural and manufacturing sectors, we derive the emergence of a city from the evolution of the division of labor, which is driven by improvements in transaction efficiency. The division of labor is necessary but not sufficient for the emergence of cities. A sufficiently high transaction efficiency will make a city emerge from a high level of division of labor between specialized manufacturers.     

分工、交易效率与双边市场的形成

基于分工和交易费用两难冲突,运用新兴古典经济学理论,解释了双边市场形成和演进的根本原因。双边市场是一种特殊的中间平台;它是交易效率改进到一定程度导致的专业化水平提高和分工深化的结果。双边市场的出现和发展也预示着市场经济演进到了更高的层次。     

小企业集群专业化分工的原因探讨

从一个新的角度———比较优势来分析小企业集群内部存在着专业化分工与协作现象及其产生的原因,并且探讨这种现象的存在使小企业的存在和发展获得竞争上的优势。     

Intraindustry trade and the gains from fragmentation

The process of cross-border production fragmentation has received much attention as a possible source of deteriorating labor-market prospects, in particular for low-skilled workers. Of the research that has concentrated on the labor-market consequences of intra-product specialization, some has been rather skeptical of whether this notion generally holds true. The paper complements this research insofar as we explicitly acknowledge that fragmentation is associated with increasing returns as they might give rise to additional labor market and welfare effects. Though these effects tend to benefit high-skilled labor, we can also identify cases in which it is the low-skilled that benefit the most. In any case, there is a range of parameter values for which both skill levels do better.     

产品内分工条件下上海制造业的升级路径：以上海大众为例

文章分析了产品内分工条件下上海制造业在国际制造业分工中的地位,指出上海制造业目前面临的最大问题是欠缺核心技术与自主品牌。因此,通过自主创新提升技术能级以及培育自主品牌是上海制造业升级的必然选择。但创新能力的提升和品牌的培育是个复杂的技术、经济和社会过程。因此,现阶段通过大规模的创建具有自主知识产权的国际品牌来实现上海制造业整体升级尚不现实。上海制造业在参与国际竞争和和产品价值链分工中,还要走一段时期的“国际代工”道路,并通过嵌入全球生产网络来提高技术能力,进而提升在国际分工中的位置。文章以上海大众为例,分析了上海大众升级的约束条件,以及上海大众实现由OEM、ODM向OBM升级的策略选择。     

Analyzing the labor market activity of immigrant families in Germany

This paper analyzes whether immigrant families facing credit constraints adopt a family investment strategy wherein, upon arrival, an immigrant spouse invests in host country-specific human capital while the other partner works to finance the family's current consumption and the spouse's skills accumulation. Using data for West Germany, we do not find evidence for such a specialization strategy. We further examine the labor supply and wage assimilation of families whose members immigrated together relative to families whose members immigrated sequentially. Our estimates indicate that this differentiation is relevant for the analysis of the labor market activities of migrant households.     

The Division of Labor Under Homogeneity: A Critique of Mises and Rothbard

A bstract .   Even the most passionate defenders of free trade, such as Mises and Rothbard, claim that trade cannot occur under conditions of strict homogeneity of land, labor, and capital. We show that specialization, trade, and the division of labor can emerge even when resources are initially homogenous, due to "natural heterogeneity," economies of scale, and learning.     

商品贸易结构变动对劳动收入份额的影响

本文从贸易结构变动出发为研究我国劳动收入份额变动的原因提供一种新的视角。近年来我国商品贸易结构发生了重要变动。理论分析表明,对外贸易不仅通过国际分工和专业化对劳动收入份额产生直接影响,还通过要素密集度变化和技术进步偏向等机制产生间接影响;实证研究发现,出口发展对我国劳动收入份额具有显著的负向作用,进口发展则具有正向作用。进出口贸易对不同要素密集度行业的影响程度与方向存在差异。     

产品内贸易对我国产业结构升级的实证分析

随着国际分工由产业内分工向产品内分工深化拓展,产品内贸易也逐渐取代产业内贸易,成为国际贸易的主流模式,中国也不例外。那么产品内贸易对中国产业结构升级是否产生影响?本文尝试进行实证分析。分析表明:近年来,我国产品内贸易表现出规模不断扩大和出口结构逐渐优化的特征,而且产品内贸易的发展是我国产业结构升级的Granger原因,即产品内贸易和产业结构升级之间存在长期的协整关系。因此,积极参与产品内国际分工,有利于扩大并优化产品内贸易的规模和结构,进而促进我国产业结构的升级。     

Division of Labor in Teams

This paper examines the incentive effects of division of labor on worker effort, in the absence of the scale effects studied by Adam Smith. The game-theoretic model gives two results. (1) Suppose workers are identical and risk-neutral, and there is stochastic observation of group output by the firm offering compensations subject to some worker-participation constraint. Then the firm can arrive at the same first-best outcome with or without division of labor. However, if workers are risk-averse, division of labor can give the firm strictly greater profit. (2) A deepening division of labor magnifies this positive incentive effect; but if workers are heterogeneous, or if there are certain informational imperfections in the production process, this incentive advantage of division of labor could be impaired or even reversed. The first result may help explain the emergence of division of labor in the early stages of industrialization without relying on the Smithian advantages, which are also present in some labor deployment schemes without division of labor. The second result throws light on some recent anecdotal evidence of a shallowing division of labor in some areas of modern manufacturing. These factors affecting the efficiency of division of labor are then further discussed in the light of recent empirical findings on division of labor and team work, such as those in Katzenbach and Smith (1993).     

产业集群组织范式视角的中小企业创新机理研究

中小企业集群与中小企业创新是当今经济领域内的两个重要课题。企业技术创新不是一个孤立的事件和活动,而是一个社会的、复杂的、互动的过程。产业集群是中小企业创新的有效平台和方式。中小企业利用集群方式进行技术创新,这同时促进了中小企业和产业集群竞争优势的提升。中小企业要想有效利用集群平台以技术创新,需要进行主动性的管理,如知识共享、提高吸收能力、构建分工协作网络等。这些要素与集群企业技术创新、集群竞争优势之间是一个正反馈的不断增强的过程。     

Open Source Software Production,Spontaneous Input,and Organizational Learning

This work shows that the modular organization of voluntary open source software (OSS) production, whereby programmers supply effort of their accord, capitalizes more on division than on specialization of labor. This is so because voluntary OSS production is characterized by an organizational learning process that dominates the individual one. Organizational learning reveals production choices that would otherwise remain unknown, thereby increasing productivity and indirectly reinforcing incentives to undertake collective problem solving.     

Work Recognition and Labor Productivity: Evidence from French Data

We empirically investigate whether labor productivity is related to work recognition. Using survey data about a large sample of French firms (N = 5309), we find that firms in which employees think their work is recognized are likely to report higher labor productivity, compared with firms where employees do not feel recognized. Our estimation results also suggest that labor productivity is strongly related to wages. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Signifying Williamson's Contribution to the Transaction Cost Approach: An Agent‐Based Simulation of Coasean Transaction Costs and Specialization

This article simulates Ronald Coase's transaction cost approach to firm organizing using agent‐based modelling, and contextualizes and contrasts it with a division‐of‐labour/specialization view of the firm that Coase challenged and sought to replace. The simulation tests the firm formation process based on the different implications of transaction costs and specialization as drivers of integration, focusing especially on Coase's rejection of specialization as an explanation for integration in the firm. The results show little support for, and suggest an important shortcoming to, Coase's transaction cost theory. My findings thereby indicate a potential relationship between the specialization theory and Williamson's Transaction Cost Economics, especially the latter's emphasis on co‐specialization through relationship‐specific investments, which helps shed light on TCE's significant influence in the theory of the firm literature.     

Time costs,aspirations and the effect of economic growth on German fertility

Recent research has shown strong support for the model of reproductive behavior derived from the new home economics, and it is shown in this discussion that the evidence from the Federal Republic of Germany is consistent with the new home economics model. There is little support for Easterlin's relative economic hypothesis, but there is limited endorsement for model which adds the influence of experience based material aspirations to the new home economics model. Easterlin's relative income model is reviewed before directing attention to the new home economics model and an explanation of fertility movements in West Germany. The new home economics model focuses on the family division of labor between home activities and work outside the home. The marked decline in German fertility during the 1970s is mostly attributable to factors such as expanding women's earning capacities which increased the importance of 2 earner families, who have a different family division of labor and possibly preferences biased towards "quality" of children rather than numbers. Also, real wage growth lagged behind the growth in experience based aspirations, and this drop in relative income is more dramatic if it is presumed that material aspirations are based upon the family's income experienced by a young adult during his/her adolescence, rather than just the father's earnings. The mother's contribution to family income will contribute to her family's actual standard of living and the desired standard of living of her children. The labor force participation rates of married, middle-aged German women increased markedly during the 1st half of the 1950s, thus tending to enhance the increase in the standard of living desired by the young adults reaching marrying and childbearing ages in the mid-1960s. The analysis indicates that if there is not a substantial reduction in the proportion of young married women in the labor force, fertility will move countercyclically. In that there must be some floor to fertility, one should be cautious of using these parameter estimates considerably outside the 1950-1977 period. Nonetheless, the estimates indicate that economic growth will not bring a substantial rise in German fertility, and, outside the unlikely situation of sustained economic decline, fertility will remain low.     

Some methods for assessing the need for non-linear models in business cycle analysis

It is often suggested that non-linear models are needed to capture business cycle features. In this paper, we subject this view to some critical analysis. We examine two types of non-linear models designed to capture the bounce-back effect in US expansions. This means that these non-linear models produce an improved explanation of the shape of expansions over that provided by linear models. But this is at the expense of making expansions last much longer than they do in reality. Interestingly, the fitted models seem to be influenced by a single point in 1958 when a large negative growth rate in GDP was followed by good positive growth in the next quarter. This seems to have become embedded as a population characteristic and results in overly long and strong expansions. That feature is likely to be a problem for forecasting if another large negative growth rate was observed.     

产品内分工与上海制造业升级路径研究

本文根据当代国际分工的发展趋势,揭示了产品内分工条件下上海制造业在国际制造业分工中的地位,指出上海制造业目前面临的最大问题是欠缺核心技术与自主品牌。本文认为,尽管通过大规模的创建具有自主知识产权的国际品牌来实现上海制造业整体升级尚不现实,但这并不排斥某些具有相对竞争优势的企业在承接国际制造业技术转移的基础上,通过自主创新,实现上海制造业升级的局部突破,进而带动上海制造业的整体升级。