公司治理结构与激励选择

在现代公司治理结构中，有效的激励和约束机制是减少委托风险、降低代理成本、提高企业绩效的焦点问题。本文从考察公司治理结构下委托代理关系产生的“代理问题”着手，研究公司治理结构下解决“代理问题”的激励制度安排，提出隐性激励和显性激励的配合使用是解决公司治理结构中“代理问题”的关键所在。通过对现代公司治理结构下两种激励制度的比较分析，探讨我国在试行年薪制与经理股票期权过程中要注意的问题，提出了我国国有企业公司治理结构下激励机制的设计思路。一、公司治理结构下的委托代理关系按照现代公司理论，出资者（如股东…     

论实施"能人治沙"战略的必要性

由于缺乏有效的激励与约束机制，我国的政府主导型生态建设委托-代理链存在着明显的低效率特征，浪费了宝贵的资源。改变这种状况的办法是对现有政府多层级委托一代理结构进行改革，建立投资者、治沙者、监管者之间的单层级直接委托一代理一监管关系，将补偿与治理成果直接挂钩，实施“能人治沙”战略。     

委托代理理论与应计制政府预算及会计改革

委托代理理论是研究如何设计出委托人与代理人之间的最优契约关系,减少信息不对称所造成的代理成本,并使其控制在最佳水平。而在政府公共管理中,政府与社会公众、政府与社会之间在本质上就是一种契约关系和委托代理关系。本文对委托代理理论的相关原理、应计制、现金制会计基础和应计制政府预算与会计改革进行了阐述,并相应提出我国应计制政府预算改革的途径设想。     

基于委托代理的创业投资引导基金管理模式研究

政府创业投资引导基金在运作中存在着三重委托代理关系,政府与引导基金管理机构之间委托代理问题的解决是成功实现政策引导目标的首要环节。在不对称信息下,引导基金管理机构的努力与付出受其专业水平、收益函数及投资政策的影响。因此,自设事业单位或国有企业管理,难以实现对引导基金管理机构的有效激励与约束。而在委托管理模式下,可以通过合约设计,吸引专业素质高的管理机构,激励管理机构努力工作,并降低管理成本。     

政府投资项目代建制监管机制研究

代建制中,工程业主和代建方通过签订委托代建合同建立委托代理关系,双方在工程建设、合同履约等方面的信息量并不对称,从而引发代建方的道德风险及其逆向选择行为等委托代理问题,降低了代建制的制度功效。由于代建制的核心是利用激励约束机制进行委托代理制度的设计和创新,关于政府投资项目代建制的委托代理模型,及其运作机制和监管机制的研究,来规范代建人的行为,使代理问题带来的损失降到最低,从总体上高效率地实现政府投资效益目标,使代建制这项新的制度能够得到更多人的支持,更好地满足实践的需要。     

政府投资项目双层多级委托代理链的分析

本文分析了政府投资项目双层多级委托代理链和两个层次中的代理人问题.第一层委托代理关系是从公众到政府代理,主要的代理问题是对公共权力的约束.第二层委托代理关系是从政府代理人到项目业主和项目执行团队,主要代理问题是政府代理人如何约束其项目业主.在第二层委托代理关系中我国政府投资项目管理方式改革发展方向是以业主市场代理模式取代业主行政代理模式.代建制的推行就是为了适应这种发展趋势的改革举措.     

信息非对称条件下政府经济管理职能的分析

社会主义国家政府作为理性“经济人”主体,具有崇高的伦理价值目标,在市场机制不完善、市场主体信息不对称和其他非市场因素作用较大等条件约束下,应发挥自身优势,强化经济管理职能,与各市场主体建立一种新的委托——代理关系模型,介入和引导市场经济,促进经济跨越式发展。     

基于政府间竞争的地方政府经济行为分析--以"铁本事件"为例

本文对“铁本事件”的经济学分析是在下述理论框架下展开的：一是上下级政府间存在直接的委托——代理关系；二是地方政府面临着经济转型期相对“软化”的制度约束环境；三是在“财政联邦主义”的框架下存在着激烈的地方政府间竞争。本文的政策含义是：在我国目前的体制环境及相应的制度安排下，地方政府主导辖区经济增长的最优选择是以破坏宏观经济的平稳运行为代价追求地方辖区经济高速增长的。     

国有企业改革的关键在于法人治理结构

国有企业法人治理结构的缺陷 企业治理机制不完善 我国的企业治理与重组滞后表现在以下两点：第一，我国企业存在内部人控制。国有企业是由政府授权经营的，企业的监督者和经营者往往都由政府委派，委托代理结构并不完善：委托代理者之间并不是一种责权利相对称的相互约束关系，存在着所有者缺位的现象，     

论政府在公司治理改革中的角色定位

本文认为我国公司治理改革中存在着一个突出的问题，就是政府在公司治理改革中的角色错位。作者从国有企业改革的实际情况出发，依据现代企业理论，对政府在公司治理改革中角色错位的现象和原因进行了深刻的分析，认为要进一步推动公司治理改革，必须对政府错位进行纠正，使政府在公司治理改革中发挥其应有的、合理的作用。政府应该在理顺委托代理关系、构建竞争性市场环境、推动以优势企业为中心的企业兼并重组等方面有所作为     

Infratechnologies and the role of government

Government support of technological change is a complex issue because barriers resulting in underinvestment exist to some degree in most industries, so difficult allocation decisions for limited government resources are necessary. The structure and timing of government support is further complicated because in any one technological area, the nature and severity of underinvestment phenomena vary during the evolution or life cycles of the relevant industries. This paper focuses on the methods and rationale for government support of two elements in industrial technology: generic technology, from which specific products and processes (i.e., innovations) are derived, and “infratechnologies,” which are necessary for the evolution of the generic technology and its applications. Particular emphasis is given to infratechnologies because they are largely supplied by sources outside the industry and have consequently been largely overlooked in previous discussions of industrial policy. A case study of one major source of infratechnology, including quantitative estimates of industry impacts, is presented.     

Fractionalization and the size of government

I study the effect of voters with a group-based social conscience. Voters care more about the well-being of those belonging to their own group than the rest of the population. Within a model of political tax determination, both fractionalization and group antagonism reduce the support for redistribution. Whereas within group inequality increases support for redistribution, inequality between groups has the opposite effect. These results hold even if a poor group forms a majority. Using a panel constructed from US micro data, I find support for the hypothesis that within race inequality increases redistribution while between race inequality decreases redistribution.     

Are government bonds net wealth? intertemporal optimization and the government budget constraint

Full integration of the government sector's intertemporal budget constraint into the private sector's intertemporal budget constraint implies the Ricardian equivalence proposition associated with Barro (1974) is valid. Private sector holdings of government bonds are not net wealth. Previous tests of the equivalence proposition estimate Keynesian consumption relationships augmented by alternative measures of government liabilities. Decisive results have not been obtained. The test presented here uses a formulation of the permanent income model to test the integration of the government's intertemporal budget constraint into the private sector's intertemporal budget constraint. The explicit use of a forward looking model of consumption imposes constraints on the equation estimated and on construction of the data; the present test is a significant improvement. The results of this test do not support the equivalence proposition.     

Tax reforms and the growth of government

This paper analyzes alternative approaches to measuring the effects of structural tax changes on government growth. It first reviews traditional time series approaches that attempt to disentangle the causal relationships between taxes and spending. It explains why these methods are incapable of uncovering the true causal links because of problems of observational equivalence and why institutional data can assist in making this determination. It then presents the methods and results from two alternative approaches and studies that analyze the effects of changes in tax structures on government growth. Both methods rely on econometric and institutional analysis. First version received: November 1997/Final version received: February 1999     

Democratic reversals and the size of government

While the fiscal and redistributive consequences of democracy is one of the central debates in political economy, most empirical studies analyze this question solely in the context of transitions to democracy. In this paper, we explore the consequences to taxation of democratic reversal using the systematic disenfranchisement of African Americans in the US South between 1880 and 1910. Following the federally-imposed extension of the franchise to the former slaves during Reconstruction (1865–1877), Southern states erected a series of legal restrictions, such as literacy tests and poll taxes, aimed primarily at preventing Southern African Americans from registering to vote. Using an original dataset of local and state taxes and a difference-in-differences estimation strategy, we demonstrate that the adoption of literacy tests for voting eligibility in each state was followed by a significant decline in tax revenues that is highly correlated to the share of each county's population who was African American. We also find that black disenfranchisement led to a shift of the tax burden onto urban counties and a greater reliance on indirect taxation. Our results survive a battery of robustness checks, alternative specifications and additional tests of the redistributionist thesis. The findings are not only consistent with standard models of redistribution following democratization, but also indicate that the elasticity of taxes with respect to enfranchisement is substantial and larger than the one suggested by the cross-national literature.     

Population size and the size of government

We examine the effect of population size on government size for a panel of 130 countries for the period between 1970 and 2014. We show that previous analyses of the nexus between population size and government size are incorrectly specified and fail to consider the influence of cross-sectional dependence, non-stationarity and cointegration. Using a panel time-series approach that adequately accounts for these issues, we find that population size has a positive long-run effect on government size. This finding suggests that effects of population size that increase government size (primarily due to the costs of heterogeneity, congestion, crime and conflict) dominate effects that reduce government size (primarily due to scale economies).     

Voter turnout and the size of government

This paper uses Swedish and Finnish municipal data to investigate the effect of changes in voter turnout on the tax rate, public spending and vote-shares. A reform in Sweden in 1970, which overall lowered the cost of voting, is applied as an instrument for voter turnout in local elections. The reform increased voter turnout in Sweden. The higher voter turnout resulted in higher municipal taxes and greater per capita local public spending. There are also indications that higher turnout decreased the vote share for right-wing parties. I use an individual survey data set to conclude that it was in particular low income earners that began to vote to a greater extent after the reform.     

The quality of government

We investigate empirically the determinants of the quality ofgovernments in a large cross-section of countries. We assessgovernment performance using measures of government intervention,public sector efficiency, public good provision, size of government,and political freedom. We find that countries that are poor,close to the equator, ethnolinguistically heterogeneous, useFrench or socialist laws, or have high proportions of Catholicsof Muslims exhibit inferior government performance. We alsofind that the larger governments tend to be the better performingones. The importance of (reasonably) exogenous historical factorsin explaining the variation in government performance acrosscountries sheds light on the economic, political, and culturaltheories of institutions.     

On good government

Besley’s treatment of principled agents is a major contribution to public choice and political economy. By focusing on politics as an agency problem, he has shown the way to a new generation of research on the interface of politics and economics.