Using Choice Experiments to Investigate the Policy Relevance of Heterogeneity in Farmer Agri-Environmental Contract Preferences

Agri-environmental contracts are used to provide incentives for nature management on private land in, e.g. the European Union. The aim of this article is to investigate preference heterogeneity for agri-environmental contracts among farmers in order to discuss potential policy improvements utilising heterogeneity. We used a choice experiment to elicit farmers’ stated preferences for afforestation contracts. Four attributes are investigated: purpose of afforestation, option of cancelling the contract, monitoring, and compensation level. All attributes present a potential conflict between farmers’ and authorities’ interests, which emphasises the importance of knowing how to handle these interests. A random parameter logit model shows that having the option to cancel the contract decreases farmers’ required compensation level and monitoring increases it. Furthermore, farmers are willing to accept a lower compensation when the aim is to protect biodiversity and ground water relative to recreation. Latent class models with class probability variables reveal discrete heterogeneity and support a division into four groups with divergent preferences. For example, a group of farmers who already have forest areas does not find the option of cancelling the contract important, whereas another group relying on the farm for income requires higher compensation. The findings indicate potential for efficiency gains from targeting the contracts.     

林权改革视域下盗伐林木罪犯罪客体的反思

现阶段林权改革拟通过确保林农的承包经营权,实现经济发展、权利保障和生态保护的三重目标。林权改革背景下的森林资源管理制度必须兼顾个人私权与公共利益,以森林资源管理制度和林木所有权为犯罪客体之盗伐林木罪的必须作出相应调整。     

农户林业技术需求影响因素分析——基于福建的调研

本文从农户户主特征、家庭特征、林地地块信息、技术本身特征、技术传播途径、林地产权制度等方面对农户林业技术需求的影响因素进行理论分析。通过实证分析得出显著影响农户林业技术需求的因素,认为经常从事林业生产、接受过林业技术培训、参加林业合作经济组织、家庭收入高且收入主要来源于林业的农户对林业技术有更强烈的需求。最后提出加强林业技术的有效供给、创新和完善林业技术的推广机制、推进适度规模经营以及加快林业合作经济组织建设等建议。     

FARMERS’ WILLINGNESS TO INVEST IN NEW COOPERATIVE INSTRUMENTS: A CHOICE EXPERIMENT

Globalization of agricultural markets put pressures on producer cooperatives to invest in expansion and growth to safeguard their competitiveness. Availability of capital is limited if farmers do not have incentives to increase their capital contribution. Cooperative literature recognizes the residual rights, transferability, and the appreciation potential of the investment as the potential solutions for the problems that may impede cooperative investments. The objective of this study is to understand farmer preferences regarding investment attributes and the potential for attracting investment capital from members and non‐members. We employ a choice experiment method to test new cooperative investment instruments. The data consist of a questionnaire conducted with 406 Finnish dairy farmers. Random parameter latent class logit model is used in the estimation of the data. The results indicate that most of the respondents regard the new investment instruments positively. However, farmers prefer restricting ownership rights to members. Incentives for members to participate in financing cooperative growth could be designed with capital‐based residual rights, mechanisms for transferability and for the appreciation of firm value. Estimation that considered choice difficulty improved model fit, which highlights the need to address respondent burden also in future studies of hypothetical investments in order to produce unbiased estimates.     

A transaction cost model of contract choice: The case of petroleum exploration

The growing literature on transaction costs posits that the structures of contracts involving exchange under uncertainty are influenced by the costs incurred by the contracting parties prior to, as well as after, a contract is signed. This research investigates the contractual responses to the substantial uncertainty attending the exchange of rights to underground petroleum deposits. It develops a transaction cost model to explain the payment structure found in these contracts. The model identifies the major transaction costs associated with the payment types used in oil and gas exploration contracts, including ex ante measurement costs and ex post production inefficiencies, and explains their effect on contract structure. Testable implications concerning variations in the payment structure of petroleum exploration contracts are generated and tested using data from private oil and gas mineral rights leasing contracts in four western states. The study has direct public policy significance in that it delineates the implications of different payment structures of oil and gas leasing contracts. These implications can be used to evaluate proposals to reform federal oil and gas leasing policies. In addition, while there has been considerable analysis of federal offshore oil and gas leasing contracts, there has been a dearth of research on private onshore oil leasing practices. This study helps to fill this empirical void.     

企业会计契约:动态过程与效率

企业是利益相关者之间相互缔约形成的利益共同体 ,企业会计契约是企业契约的主要组成部分。利益相关者之间的利益冲突与协调是通过会计契约来实现的 ,而企业契约的执行所需要的计量与监督功能则具体落实在会计契约的动态运行与优化上。优化会计契约机制的经济途径是从决策行为的角度 ,将其剩余控制权配置给决策效率最大的参与者 ;而法律途径则是运用格式化方法将经过长期实践检验、对促使会计契约机制运行有效的惯例加以总结 ,以此节约会计契约结构的规范成本     

契约视角下的PPP项目承包商治理机制研究

本文从契约关系的视角研究了PPP项目承包商的治理机制问题,包括正式契约关系治理、剩余权利配置和关系契约治理,这3种治理机制分别对应着双方合作内容的不确定性程度。研究表明,正式契约适合对业主-承包商契约中确定性内容的治理,即利用明确的契约条款对双方合作关系中的行为风险或敲竹杠风险进行抑制。关系契约可以建立在事后双方可观察到的结果的基础上,适合对较不确定内容的治理。剩余权力的配置是一种弹性治理机制,适用于任何无法描述、无法判断或无法评价结果的不确定性内容,它通过对项目剩余索取权和剩余控制权的对称配置,提高承包商的主动合作性。     

浅议旅游合同的主要条款

旅游合同的主要条款确定了旅游合同当事人的权利和义务，是保证旅游质量的前提。本文首先对旅游合同的形式作了简要分析，并重点对国内外旅游合同主要条款的规定进行比较及评价，阐明了我国应结合实际，借鉴有关规定，尽可能全面地确定旅游合同的主要条款，以减少各种不必要的纠纷。     

林权改革推进中农户林业合作经营的动因

集体林权制度改革后,小农户与大市场之间的矛盾,是我国林业发展的一个突出矛盾。要解决这一矛盾,提升农户进入市场的能力,需提高分散农户在林业经营中的合作程度。从内外两方面探究了农户林业合作经营需求产生的动因,认为合作需求的产生受农户自身内在驱动因素与外部环境推动因素的共同作用,政府在制定相关扶持政策时应以农户需求为基础,尊重农户意愿。     

Explicit versus implicit contracts for dividing the benefits of cooperation

Experimental evidence has accumulated highlighting the limitations of formal and explicit contracts in certain situations, and has identified environments in which informal and implicit contracts are more efficient. This paper documents the superior performance of explicit over implicit contracts in a new partnership environment in which both contracting parties must incur effort to generate a joint surplus, and one (“strong”) agent controls the surplus division. In the treatment in which the strong agent makes a non-binding, cheap talk “bonus” offer to the weak agent, this unenforceable promise doubles the rate of joint high effort compared to a baseline with no promise. The strong agents most frequently offered to split the gains of the high effort equally, but actually delivered this amount only about one-quarter of the time. An explicit and enforceable contract offer performs substantially better, increasing the frequency of the most efficient outcome by over 200% relative to the baseline.     

Trust, contract and economic cooperation

After providing a brief overview of the standard economic analysisof incomplete contracts in terms of property rights, transactioncosts and self-enforcing implicit contracts, the author showswhy, in the orthodox view, trust is not a pertinent categoryto their negotiation or effectiveness. Drawing on various empiricalstudies which he has undertaken in the area of industrial relations,the author develops an alternative approach to the study ofincomplete contracts in which the concept of trust is central.In this alternative vision, boundedly rational agents with limitedforesight form provisional judgements about the trustworthinessof their trading partners based on the success of their pastencounters. A consequence of this alternative understandingof incomplete contracts is that there is no guarantee that cooperationwill succeed, even when the circumstances appear to promisemutual gain. The author argues, however, that by establishingan appropriate set of procedural rules to guide their responseto the unanticipated, agents can promote the kinds of mutuallearning that contribute to the build-up of trust and that increasethe likelihood of successful cooperation.     

Is there a safety premium in the design of corporate bond contracts?

This study examines empirically whether there is a safety premium in the design of bond contracts by highlighting a safety attribute of general mortgage bonds in Japan, which can give especially strong protection to bondholders, who would have priority in the event of legal liquidation. The effects of a safety attribute were not prominent at first in the difference-in-differences analysis. However, the methods for analysing selectivity bias allow us to provide a safety premium in the design of bond contracts, such as lower spread, lower commission, and larger issue size. The resulting bias would depend on the reputation of the bookrunner. This study uncovers the underlying link for the connection between a safety attribute and the observed and unobserved issuer and bookrunner characteristics, to indicate that a safety premium is related to various terms of bond contracts, including the bookrunner-issuer match.     

Network effects on labor contracts of internal migrants in China: a spatial autoregressive model

This paper studies the fact that 37% of the internal migrants in China do not sign a labor contract with their employers, as revealed in a nationwide survey. These contract-free jobs pay lower hourly wages, require longer weekly work hours, and provide less insurance or on-the-job training than regular jobs with contracts. We find that the co-villager networks play an important role in a migrant’s decision on whether to accept such insecure and irregular jobs. By employing a comprehensive nationwide survey in 2011 in the spatial autoregressive logit model, we show that the common behavior of not signing contracts in the co-villager network increases the probability that a migrant accepts a contract-free job. We provide three possible explanations on how networks influence migrants’ contract decisions: job referral mechanism, limited information on contract benefits, and the “mini-labor union” formed among co-villagers, which substitutes for a formal contract. In the subsample analysis, we also find that the effects are larger for migrants whose jobs were introduced by their co-villagers, male migrants, migrants with rural Hukou, short-term migrants, and less educated migrants. The heterogeneous effects for migrants of different employer types, industries, and home provinces provide policy implications.     

Staged financing: a trade-off theory of holdup and option value

This paper investigates financial contract design in venture capital investments and shows that staged financing is the implementation of optimal contracts. In designing contracts, venture capitalists consider the value of real options and the costs of holdup. This consideration boils down to contract rigidity and flexibility: rigid contracts mitigate the holdup problem of entrepreneurs, but have little option values, whereas flexible contracts create real options for venture capitalists in corporate decision-making, but yield weak bargaining power when ventures appear promising. In optimal contracts, venture capitalists choose flexibility by separating capital into stages and then strategically allocating control rights at each stage. This strategy creates option value in corporate governance, and can protect sunk investments in distress while capturing the potential benefits of good outcomes.     

Community–Industry Contracting over Natural Resource use in a Context of Weak Property Rights: The Case of Indonesia

Decentralization in Indonesia has resulted in an increased influence of local communities over the terms of logging agreements with timber companies. The outcomes of such community–company negotiations vary significantly across communities. What are the conditions that cause this variation, and how can the outcomes be more effectively and efficiently influenced by third-party actors such as the local government or NGOs? This paper addresses these questions by developing a game-theoretic model to illustrate the strategic interactions between communities and companies. The model allows for endogeneity of de facto property rights and bargaining positions. We show that third-party actions to improve the community’s bargaining position by raising its reservation utility may result in an increase in the area logged and thereby harm the environment. Our results indicate that the strategy of intervention matters. In particular, strategies that raise the sensitivity of interventions to local logging threats are likely to be more cost-effective in supporting communities and reducing forest degradation than more indiscriminatory strategies. The model will be relevant to other situations where communities negotiate contracts over natural resource use with outside actors in a context of weak property rights, a situation increasingly observed in other developing countries.     

加快当前中国社会林业发展的意义和途径

时下的中国,生态文明建设日程正在日益推进,林业的关键地位格外凸显,社会林业作为推动生态文明发展的林业的重要组成部分,越来越得到重视。简要阐述了发展社会林业的意义,试分析了发展社会林业的途径,以期望能为促进社会林业以至整个生态文明建设服务。     

Revenue insurance purchase decisions of farmers

The objective of this study is to evaluate farm, household, and financial characteristics of cash grain farmers’ decisions of whether to purchase revenue insurance. Using farm-level data these characteristics were identified by estimating a logit model of revenue insurance purchase decisions by farm operators. Results indicate that farm operators with the ability to self-insure through accumulation of sufficient wealth reserves measured in terms of the ratio of debts-to-assets, operators with off-farm income, and participation in production and marketing contracts, are more likely to pursue these strategies as a substitute for federal revenue insurance programmes. Further, study finds that older and wealthy cash grain farmers are less likely to buy revenue insurance.     

坚持农地集体所有的思考

本文在系统梳理中国农村改革历程的基础上,指出改革初期,为了满足农民的温饱诉求,党和政府逐渐认同了农民推出的“大包干”做法;温饱问题解决之后,为了满足农民外出从事非农就业的诉求,党和政府赋予农民自主流转其承包土地经营权的权利;现在,为了满足农民享有土地财产权益的诉求,党和政府应赋予农民土地股份的权利,将农村集体土地产权按份共有的改革目标落到实处。股权是集体经济的基础。改革初期以含义模糊的承包权替代含义清晰的土地股权,是为了达成改革共识;现在以含义清晰的土地股权替代含义模糊的土地承包权,是改革深化和认识与时俱进的结果。     

Law environment,government regulation and implicit contract: Empirical evidence from the scandals of China’s listed companies

In China’s transitional economy, government regulation could be a substitute for the lack of law mechanism and regulator’s power could spill over into other areas not regulated. Then, theoretically it could construct implicit contracts. For example, China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) has the rights to choose initial public offering(IPO) firms among applicants. It might construct implicit contracts between CSRC and local governments if the former consider the frequency and the severity of the scandals among different areas. Local governments could make decisions on whether and how much to implement the implicit contracts.     

Dynamic mechanism design with hidden income and hidden actions

We develop general recursive methods to solve for optimal contracts in dynamic principal-agent environments with hidden states and hidden actions. Starting from a general mechanism with arbitrary communication, randomization, full history dependence, and without restrictions on preferences or technology, we show that the optimal contract can be implemented as a recursive direct mechanism. A curse of dimensionality which arises from the interaction of hidden income and hidden actions can be overcome by introducing utility bounds for behavior off the equilibrium path. Environments with multiple actions are implemented using multiple layers of such off-path utility bounds.