产权制度、合谋条款及国家成功——农民工工资纠纷案(以建筑市场为例)的契约理论再解释

建筑市场的产权制度向雇主提供了侵害农民工私人产权有利可图的“共同知识”,分散于全国各地的雇主便由此在侵害农民工私人产权问题上达成了合谋条款。分别实施这种合谋条款表现为每一雇主在其与农民工事实上签订的雇佣工资支付契约中含有谈判地位不对称、“裸体工资”和拖欠支付等三大侵权条款。由于这三大侵权条款是严格遵循现行产权制度达成的并与这种产权制保持高度一致,必然会得到国家强制保障及实施,因而农民工工资纠纷案的发生不是国家强制实施的失败,恰恰是国家强制实施的成功。要从根本上阻止拖欠行为,维护农民工的各种权益,最好的选择在于进行产权制度改革。     

对中国基金业困境的契约理论思考

现实的契约都是不完全的,中国基金的契约也不例外,基金契约的不完全直接导致了封闭式基金折价率居高不下和开放式基金遭遇大范围的巨额净赎回。对此,要规范、约束契约主体行为,缩小契约“缺口”,构建第三方强制履约体系,建“立声誉”机制,促进基金契约自我履行。     

民工权益保障与短期雇佣契约的第三方实施

“民工荒”与民工被恶意欠薪两者之间有必然的联系。由于短期雇佣契约中的民工权益与雇主所追求的目标有冲突，导致雇佣契约的自我实施和相互实施失效，有必要政府作为第三者加入契约的实施，从法律、监察和组建工会三个方面进行强制实施。     

企业雇佣契约的性质研究

雇佣契约并不是简单的"自我执行"契约,而是基于可置信威胁由第二方强制实施的一种"私人秩序".这使得"资本雇佣劳动"型的雇佣契约内会发生雇主对雇员通过"解雇要挟"而独占全部准租金的行为.尽管法律上"退出的自由"从形式上保证了雇员通过退出可以不受契约内不公正对待,但由于"退出的自由取决于对生产性资源处置权的私人控制",而雇员往往又不占有资本这一最重要的生产性资源,所以,雇员并没有实质性的退出自由,此时,国家与法律的适时介入,对于保证雇佣契约的公正性也必不可少.     

中国农民工工资拖欠问题的经济分析

农民工工资拖欠问题是影响农民增收的一个重要因素，形成这一现象的原因是多方面的，既包括农民工自身的素质问题和农民工群体的现状，也包括用工单位运作不规范的问题，还包括政府监管不利及政绩工程造成工资拖欠的问题。本文试着从农民工产生的原因、特点和用工各方主体的特徵及政府的作用和角色入手，结合近年来中国农民工工资被拖欠的大量事实，从制度的角度追行分析，运用博弈论、信息经济学、契约理论及相关知识封三方主体造成工资拖欠的深层原因进行剖析，特别是封农民工因为在与雇主就劳务问题的谈判中所处的劣势地位而放弃合约的签订及建设资金运作缺乏监管的问题和政府作为合约监督的第三方不作为行为的分析，寻找工资拖欠的内在原因和本质。运用经济学的分析方法给出了一些建议。     

利益相关者视角下的农民工权益保护

该文从国家与地方政府、资方(工厂)和农民工三类利益相关者互动的视角,讨论了《劳动合同法》立法与实施的具体过程中农民工权益保护状况及其原因。研究发现,权益保护现状并不乐观,《劳动合同法》的实施过程中政府与资方加强联合,通过制造"去合法化"条件、选择性利用政策等方式,农民工权益被阻隔在法律保护之外;进而,农民工自身产生了畏惧心理,缺乏维权的内在动力与意愿,形成地方政府、资方和农民工三方"共谋"的局面。     

运用现代契约理论化解高违约率难题

公司与农户之间高违约率的事实，已经成为制约我国农业产业化经营快速发展的难题。从现代契约理论来看，契约设计、自我实施机制和第三方裁判机制失效是导致这一难题出现的根本原因。而创新契约设计模式、培育中介组织、加强诚信教育、完善监督机制等是解决问题的重要途径。     

关系契约到规则契约:路径依赖与模式转变

本文通过对关系契约内涵的分析,说明关系契约有其两面性:一方面建立在良好声誉基础上的关系契约能够促进规则契约的有效执行;另一方面关系契约也可能因其垄断和主导力量,破坏以市场为基础的规则契约的执行,表现为对交易一方或第三方权益的侵害,其结果使经济导向"坏"的市场经济轨道上.在关系契约向规则契约转变过程中,合理的社会经济基础结构和均衡社会资源配王对于推动规则契约的执行有着重要意义.并通过经济交易各方的充分协商和谈判,使规则契约成为普遍共识,从而促进社会的和谐发展.     

关系型契约特殊类别:超市场契约

从契约理论的角度看,企业网络或企业与市场间中间状态,可以由“超市场契约”来描述,它是关系型契约的一个特殊类别,是拥有关键性资源的企业以管理输出和行使指挥权方式与其他相关企业的交易。私人可履约资本、合作的潜在丰厚收益和违约的机会成本,以及威廉姆森式的安全保证条款是促使企业间超市场契约可自我实施的条件。     

浅析契约与法律之间的僵死划分趋于动摇

在“契约绝对自由”的观念下,契约被看作当事人之间制定的法律,国家制定法很少涉及契约的内容。国家在此时的主要职能在于为契约提供事后救济。但是,随着社会的发展,“私法”和“公法”相互融合的现象出现,同时契约与国家制定法以往的划分边界也趋于动摇。文章通过实证的方法对其予以证实,同时对这一法律现象产生的原因做了探讨。     

On Misunderstanding Government: an Analysis of the Art of Policy Advice

In the traditional economics literature government is treated as an agent exogenous to the economy. When economists confront situations where individuals cannot sign binding contracts, they invoke government as the “third party” that can enforce the contracts; after studying the macroeconomic problems of a country, economists frequently go on to tell what government should do to improve the outcome. It is argued in this paper that this is an erroneous view of government and is the reason why the advice of economists and other social scientists have had so little impact on government behavior. The difficulties of advising an endogenous government are highlighted by developing a new game, the Cheater's Roulette. It demonstrates that even when the adviser and the politician have very similar objectives, there may be no straightforward way to transmit the knowledge of the adviser to the politician. Having analysed the subject of advising government, the paper goes on to discuss, more speculatively, some general issues concerning the modeling of an endogenous government.     

Start up costs, limited enforcement, and the hidden economy

This paper examines how much of the difference in the size of the informal sector and in per capita income across countries can be accounted by regulation costs and enforcement of financial contracts. It constructs and solves numerically a general equilibrium model with credit constrained heterogenous agents, occupational choices over formal and informal businesses, financial frictions and a government sector which imposes taxes and regulations on formal firms. The benefit from formalization is better access to outside finance. The quantitative exercises suggest that: (i) regulation costs and not the level of enforcement account for differences in the size of the informal sector between United States and Mediterranean Europe; (ii) for a developing country like Peru, however, contract enforcement and regulation costs are equally important in accounting for the size of the informal sector; and (iii) regulation costs and contract enforcement do not account for most of the income differences observed among countries.     

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     

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.     

Governance Structures, Insider Status, and Boundary Maintenance

If legal enforcement of contracts were omnipresent, omniscient, and costless, the identity and history of one's partners would be irrelevant, since any problems caused by unreliable partners could be remedied effectively. However, when legal enforcement is localized, imperfect, and costly, different governance structures for contracts carry implications for the sets of acceptable contracting partners. When legal enforcement for contracts is based on national law, whose reach is coterminous with a state's territory, acceptable partners tend to be defined territorially. When state enforcement of contract law is weak or nonexistent or when a contract is so vulnerable to nonperformance that it requires auxiliary support, actors must devise an alternative or supplement to state enforcement. The most relevant contracting boundaries then will be ones defining groups that can efficaciously create and maintain intertemporal, inter-issue, and inter-actor linkages. We examine just three of many possibilities: family-based, function-based, and ethnicity- or religion-based groups. These different systems of governance affect which entities are recognized as members in the club of actors, as well as how actors define their contracting boundaries and distinguish between those with whom they contract relatively freely and those with whom their contracting is more circumscribed.     

Ethnic divisions,contract choice,and search costs in the Guatemalan land rental market

This paper shows how ethnic diversity in a context of weak property rights enforcement can result in market segmentation. The paper analyzes how contract enforcement problems affect the joint decision of partner and contract choice by landlords in the land rental market in Guatemala. The empirical method allows partner choice to be determined not only by the characteristics and relative scarcity of the specific landowner and tenant, but also by the characteristics of other potential tenants. The results show that landowners without formal title are more likely to restrict their partners to tenants from the same ethnic group. Partner choice is found to be less important for renting with interlinked land–labor contracts.     

Self-Regulation and Government Oversight

Self-regulation is a feature of a number of professions. For example, in the U.S. the government delegates aspects of financial market regulation to self-regulatory organizations (SROs) like the New York Stock Exchange and the National Association of Securities Dealers. We analyse one regulatory task of an SRO, enforcing antifraud rules so agents will not cheat customers. Specifically, we model contracting/enforcement as a two-tier problem. An SRO chooses its enforcement policy: the likelihood that an agent is investigated for fraud and a penalty schedule. Given an enforcement policy, agents compete by offering contracts that maximize customers' expected utility. We assume that the SRO's objective is to maximize the welfare of its members, the agents. We show that the SRO chooses a more lax enforcement policy—meaning less frequent investigations—than what customers would choose. A general conclusion is that control of the enforcement policy governing contracts confers substantial market power to a group of otherwise competitive agents. We also investigate government oversight of the self-regulatory process. The threat of government enforcement leads to more enforcement by the SRO, just enough to pre-empt any government enforcement.     

市场互联性、关系型合约与经济转型

本文通过将单一市场的关系型合约推广到互联的关系型合约,刻画了社会分工程度(市场范围)与微观治理机制(基于关系型合约的治理还是基于正式合约的治理)之间的互动关系:基于何种合约来治理受市场范围的影响,市场范围越小,关系型合约越重要,正式合约越不重要;反之则反是。特别地,从这个视角看,计划经济向市场经济转型的过程,是劳动分工不断深化和市场范围不断扩大的过程,在微观治理上是一个从互联的关系型合约不断向正式合约过渡的过程。中国的渐进式改革之所以成功,很大程度上是由于渐进式改革使原来自我实施的关系型合约没有受到很大程度的破坏,在正式合约缺位时,关系型合约仍然能够维持社会经济的运行;俄罗斯的激进式改革几乎在一夜之间破坏了自我实施的关系型合约的可维持性,而短期内又不可能建立依赖正式合约的治理模式,出现了微观治理失效。本文还解释了中国经济在缺乏正式的法律和产权体系下取得骄人绩效的“悖论”,即由于关系型合约的自我实施性,因而并不需要相应的正式制度安排。本文总体上支持“后华盛顿共识”的渐进改革路径,并为其提供了动态的微观机制。     

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。     

Payment choice in international trade: Theory and evidence from cross‐country firm‐level data

When trading across borders, firms choose between different payment contracts. Theoretically, this should allow firms to trade‐off differences in financing costs and enforcement across countries. This paper provides evidence for this hypothesis employing firm‐level data from a large number of developing countries. As predicted, international transactions are more likely paid after delivery when financing costs in the source country are high and when contract enforcement is low. We extend the theory and also show empirically that the more complex an industry is, the more important is contract enforcement and the less important are financing costs for the contract choice.