契约不完全一定导致投资无效率吗?——一个带有不对称信息的敲竹杠模型

经典的不完全契约理论认为,契约不完全会导致专用性人力资本投资的无效率。但是这难以解释现实中大量存在的雇员进行有效率投资的现象。通过在一个经典的敲竹杠模型中引入重复博弈和关于投资者能力的不对称信息,本文证明:契约不完全一定会导致敲竹杠,但是敲竹杠未必妨碍专用性人力资本投资效率。本文刻画了三类完美贝叶斯均衡(PBE):好的声誉使高能者在第一期做出社会最优的专用性人力资本投资,并且使低能者退出市场;中性的声誉使高能者和低能者都在第一期做出社会最优的专用性人力资本投资;而坏的声誉使高能者和低能者都退出市场。本文还表明,在动态环境下产权仍然是重要的。     

基于不完全契约的专用性人力资本投资激励

不完全契约理论是分析和解决专用性投资不足的有力工具。在阐述不完全契约分析框架之后,分别从个人和企业层面探讨了专用性人力资本投资的不足,最后,基于不完全契约理论探讨了专用性人力资本投资的激励措施。     

专用性人力资本投资与工资合约——引入不对称信息的敲竹杠模型

经典的不完全合约理论认为,当事人的专用性投资会引发敲竹杠行为从而导致专用性投资的无效率。本文通过在经典的敲竹杠模型中引入关于雇员能力的不对称信息,构建一个新的模型来分析企业工资合约的刚性与灵活性,以解决敲竹杠所导致的专用性人力资本投资不足。分析表明:从保护雇佣双方专用性人力资本投资方面看,固定工资合约优于灵活工资合约;且在固定工资合约下,雇员虽然仍可能面临敲竹杠风险,但敲竹杠未必妨碍专用性人力资本投资效率。     

不完全契约与国际贸易:一个评述

不完全契约与国际贸易理论的交叉已成为国际贸易前沿研究课题。在制度经济学研究领域,随着对交易成本、产权问题的研究深入,逐步发展了不完全契约理论。契约的不完全性导致专用性投资在事前无法写入契约,事后收益的分配只能通过"再谈判"的方式进行,而这种再谈判因资产专用性而具有双边锁定效应,此外不完全契约也影响契约的执行,进而影响制度质量。不完全契约的这些特性对国际贸易和国际投资产生影响。本文对近年来发展起来的不完全契约对比较优势形成和贸易量影响的理论进行梳理,阐述契约质量在形成一国比较优势和出口差异化产品方面的理论与经验研究的进展;梳理不完全契约决定企业边界的理论,就不完全契约对跨国公司选择垂直整合还是外包的决定因素等前沿理论进行归纳和评述,并且对有关中国问题的研究贡献进行述评。基于对主要文献的梳理和分析,初步探讨了此领域未来可能的研究方向,为中国转型加新兴经济体的相关研究提供启发和参考。     

农产品质量安全的契约选择:基于关系契约理论的分析框架

已有文献较多地从信息不对称角度入手研究农产品质量安全问题,认为信息不对称下的逆向选择和道德风险是农产品质量安全的主要风险,而对于契约不完全和专用性投资不平衡导致的敲竹杠问题未给予充分的重视。文章结合信息不对称和契约不完全理论,具体区分了农产品质量安全供给中的三种机会主义类型,即逆向选择、道德风险和敲竹杠。从关系契约治理的视角对现行农业契约的主要模式进行了效果评价,提出农业契约模式的选择依据,并为农业合作社的发展提供了理论佐证。     

人力资本专用性投资与国防科技创新能力培育

文章以不完全契约为其理论基础,以人力资本专用性投资为研究视角,将科技人才的创新能力与人力资本专用性投资联系起来,在简要分析人力资本专用性投资不足的症结的基础上,与我国国防科技工业相联系,探讨了加强国防科技人力资本专用性投资,培育国防科技人才创新能力的几点途径。     

不完全契约、专用性投资与纵向一体化

笔者探讨了不完全契约情形下市场交易、长期契约和纵向一体化的专用性投资水平.基于博弈结构,我们将市场交易和长期契约分别视为鲁宾斯坦和纳什谈判方式.结论表明,纵向一体化能达到最优的专用性投资水平,并且,在长期契约中下游企业的专用性投资水平要高于市场交易.进一步表明,为了消除市场交易情况下专用性投资的不足,可取的办法不仅仅是纵向一体化,长期契约也是可行的办法,但它的投资激励不如一体化.     

弱产权与研发人力资本投资激励问题研究

企业研发过程是一个知识创造的过程,研发形成的技术创新成果包括可缔约的显性知识和不可缔约的隐性知识,技术创新成果知识产权的保护存在困难,事前难以基于研发人力资本投资和技术创新知识产权进行缔约,使用完全契约理论研究方法则存在一定的局限性。论文运用不完全契约理论,研究了研发过程中弱知识产权保护下,研究人员的事前研发投资激励问题。研究认为,在不完全契约背景下,研究人员总是存在事前研发投资不足问题。如果存在外部风险投资公司,能够提高研究人员的投资水平;而创新技术知识溢出程度越大,越不利于研发人员作出有效率地投资。创新技术的专用性程度也影响到研发人员的事前研发投入激励,在创新技术为完全专用性技术的情况下,研发人员作出的事前研发投入水平低于在创新技术为通用性技术的情况下的投入水平,但仍能获得部分事后谈判准租。     

不完全契约及其治理：一个文献综述

不完全契约理论强调了现实中契约的不完全性,注重信息可观察但不可证实和行动事前不可缔约的重要性.在此基础上,提出了各种挽救不完全合同效率的办法.以交易互利性为出发点,从控制权配置、逐步投资、声誉投资和连续时间缔约四个方面回顾了不完全契约理论的发展,并讨论了不完全契约理论未来的发展方向.     

外部选择与关系专用性投资激励——基于GHM模型的研究

现实中的契约总是不完全的,当自然状态被参与人观察到之后,为了保证交易有效率,通常会对事前契约进行再谈判.首先,论文研究了事后再谈判时参与人的外部选择对事后合作租金的分配影响及事前关系专用性投资激励问题;其次,根据外部选择是否具有约束力,将外部选择区分为威胁点和现状点.研究结果显示:当外部选择为现状点时,不完全契约会导致事前关系专用性投资不足;而如果事后外部选择为威胁点时,投资方会作出有效率投资或投资过度     

Ex post adaptations and hybrid contracts in software development services

We follow the recent literature on ex post adaptations in procurement and argue that highly volatile specifications result in multiple variations of fixed price (FP) and time and materials (T&M) contracts. Specifically, placing a cap on specification change in FP contracts prevents specification volatility, similar to the way that placing a cap on the price in T&M contracts prevents price escalation. We argue that these hybrid mechanisms are particularly important in software development contracting, a new critical business capability involving frequent and costly ex post adaptations to specification change. The level of completeness in these contractual archetypes is hypothesized to be determined by contracting costs and benefits, where costs are related to project uncertainty and benefits are related to the likelihood of vendor opportunism. We test this hypothesis with a unique data set of 270 software development contracts entered into by a leading international bank. The analysis confirms the existence of multiple hybrid contracts that mitigate both price escalation and specification volatility. It also shows that contracting costs and benefits explain more variance in contract choice when these hybrids are included, uncovering the detailed mechanisms used to curb opportunism when the vendor is less familiar to the client.     

Growth,selection and appropriate contracts

We study a dynamic model where growth requires both long-term investment and the selection of talented managers. When ability is not ex-ante observable and contracts are incomplete, managerial selection imposes a cost, as managers facing the risk of being replaced choose a sub-optimally low level of long-term investment. This generates a trade-off between selection and investment that has implications for the choice of contractual relationships and institutions. Our analysis shows that rigid long-term contracts sacrificing managerial selection may prevail at early stages of economic development and when heterogeneity in ability is low. As the economy grows, however, knowledge accumulation increases the return to talent and makes it optimal to adopt flexible contractual relationships, where managerial selection is implemented even at the cost of lower investment. Measures of investor protection aimed at limiting the bargaining power of managers improve selection under short-term contracts. Given that knowledge accumulation raises the value of selection, the optimal level of investor protection increases with development.     

最优农业契约与中国农业产业化模式

本文在一个统一的关系契约分析框架下,比较了单期和多期条件下"农户+市场"、"龙头企业+农户"和"龙头企业+农场"三种主要的农业产业化模式及其衍生模式的生产效率,并分析了产权、声誉、抵押和风险态度对最优农业契约的影响。我们的分析表明,在单期条件下,由于契约不完全和敲竹杠效应,所有模式都无法实现最优效率;在多期条件下,如果贴现率足够低,"龙头企业+农户"和"龙头企业+农场"这两种模式都可以实现最优效率;如果市场价格波动比较大,则"龙头企业+农场"模式优于"龙头企业+农户"模式。我们还分析了农户的转售成本对契约效率的影响,并提供了支持本文结论的典型案例。     

Contractual governance,business groups and transition

We suggest a unified framework to explain the following stylized pattern in the development of contractual governance and industrial organization. Contractual governance in many emerging economies is characterized by relational contracting. Coincident with relational contracts are large, diversified organizations — often referred to as business groups. As institutions and market intermediaries develop, a process of transition from relational contracting to arms‐length explicit contracting takes place. During this phase relational and explicit contracts complement each other. Business groups initially expand in size, scope and increase the strength of ties. As development proceeds, a threshold is crossed after which business groups begin to unravel. This process of transition in contractual governance is often accompanied by a period of rapid growth, which eventually comes to a stop. JEL classification: L22, L14, O17.     

Legal Remedies for Breach of the Regulatory “Contract”

We present a model of the regulatory contract that focuses on the mutual investment of buyer and seller and recognizes the cost of contractual renegotiation and the importance of breach remedies when contracts are incomplete. We model renegotiation as a litigation game played before a quasi-judicial administrative court. We find that the standard contractual remedy of expectations damages cannot implement first-best levels of investment for both buyer and seller. If the seller fully recovers its sunk investment upon buyer breach, however, then first-best levels of investment by both buyer and seller can be supported provided litigation costs are small enough.     

Adaptive contracting: the trial-and-error approach to outsourcing

Summary. Adaptive contracting occurs when a principal experiments with the delegation of authority through leaving contracts incomplete. We highlight two potential benefits of adaptive contracting: First, the delegation of authority can be advantageous even if the agent acts opportunistically, since expected private benefits will be shared between the parties through price negotiation. Second, the principal extracts information from experimenting with delegation of authority and we identify a positive option value embodied in the principals ability to extend or withdraw the delegated authority in future contracting periods.Received: 14 April 2003, Revised: 26 January 2004, JEL Classification Numbers: D72, L33, L97.We thank John Sørensen and Henrik Severin Hansen for introducing us to the contractual and economical issues in local bus outsourcing in Denmark, Oliver Hart and Antonio Rangel for early discussions on adaptive contracting and Christian Aastrup for research assistance. We are grateful to Danish Transportation Research Institute (www.dtf.dk) for comments and financial support for this project.     

The Law and Economics of Costly Contracting

In most of the contract theory literature, contracting costsare assumed either to be high enough to preclude certain formsof contracting or low enough to permit any contract to be written.Similarly researchers usually treat renegotiation as eithercostless or prohibitively costly. This article addresses themiddle ground between these extremes, in which the costs ofcontracting and renegotiation can take intermediate values andthe contracting parties can themselves influence these costs.The context for our analysis is the canonical problem of inducingefficient relation-specific investment and efficient ex posttrade. Among our principle results are: (i) The efficiency andcomplexity of the initial contract are decreasing in the costto create a contract. Hence the best mechanism design contractscan be too costly to write. (ii) When parties use the simplercontract forms, they require renegotiation to capture ex postsurplus and to create efficient investment incentives. In somecases, parties want low renegotiation costs. More interestingis that, in other cases, parties have a strict preference formoderate renegotiation costs. (iii) The effect of contract lawon contract form is significant but has been overlooked. Inparticular, the law's interpretive rules raise the cost of enforcingcomplex contracts, and thus induce parties to use simple contracts.Worse, the law also lowers renegotiation costs, which furtherundermines complex contracts and is also inappropriate for someof the simpler contracts.     

Foundations of Incomplete Contracts

In the last few years, a new area has emerged in economic theory, which goes under the heading of "incomplete contracting". However, almost since its inception, the theory has been under attack for its lack of rigorous foundations. In this paper, we evaluate some of the criticisms that have been made of the theory, in particular, those in Maskin and Tirole (1999 a ). In doing so, we develop a model that provides a rigorous foundation for the idea that contracts are incomplete.