演化经济学企业理论述评

演化经济学的企业理论批判了契约理论对企业生产功能的忽视,并运用演化经济学的分析框架,通过研究企业内知识的产生、传播和利用过程,以及组织与个人的交互学习,重新解释了企业的存在、边界和内部组织问题。在经验研究方面,演化企业理论主要在战略管理领域中,围绕企业异质性、专有资源和动态能力等概念,分析了企业竞争优势的建立、维持,以及多样化经营等问题。     

企业理论:契约,所有权,委托代理

新古典理论主要从技术角度来分析企业,将企业视为黑箱。而新制度学派的企业理论则把目光投向了企业内部,其重点是企业的契约性质理论、所有权安排理论、委托代理理论。尽管对企业理论进行划分和整理具有一定的难度,文章仍然试图以企业的契约理论的递进层次为线索,按照理论的研究领域和核心问题给出一个解释,并给出了企业的契约理论内部框架。     

企业组织理论新发展

早期的组织研究集中在企业内部，考察以官僚行政机构为特征的科层制组织的适用性及变革的方向。但自从新制度经济学家将“交易”作为考察单元，提出了将不完全契约和关系契约作为企业间交易活动协调的三边或双边治理机制的交易费用理论(TCT)后，组织研究跨越了单体企业的边界范围，研究视角也开始走向了管理学、     

基于契约的企业边界决定理论介评

西方经济学家从契约的角度对企业边界决定问题进行了大量研究,产生了许多经典理论学说。其中颇具代表性和影响性的理论是技术决定论、交易成本决定论、产权决定论、监督成本决定论、激励成本决定论。这些理论洞悉了技术、交易成本、产权等因素对企业边界的影响。但由于其研究方法的局限性,很难解释当前企业界发生的并购、合作、外购、业务交换等现象。未来企业的边界具有动态性和模糊性特征,企业边界决定理论的研究还有待进一步深化。     

一个企业理论的研究综述

古典经济学和新古典经济学由于其与现实不相符合的理想假定——完全理性和充分信息而把企业看作"技术的黑箱"。这种推论自科斯的经典论文《企业的性质》发表以来引起经济学家们的关注和重新思考。20世纪70年代以来,对假设前提的日趋现实化的改进和新的分析工具的引入,极大地促进了企业理论的发展。研究现代企业理论的发展对于现代企业制度的认识和我国国有企业建立规范的现代企业制度具有重要理论意义和实践意义。文章分析围绕企业存在性、边界、内部组织和竞争优势,论述了企业理论的主要流派:新古典理论、契约理论、交易费用理论等,并对各种理论进行了比较,分析了企业理论的发展趋势。     

企业能力理论对契约理论的批判和超越

现代企业理论在其发展过程中逐渐演变为两个大的流派，即企业的契约理论和企业的能力理论。企业契约理论由于对有限理性和机会主义假设处理不充分以及忽视创新、学习和知识的性质而存有很大的局限性，企业能力理论对企业存在、边界和治理结构设计提供了一种新视角。     

企业理论的发展--从"为股东负责"到"为利益相关者负责"的企业理论

企业理论是关于企业为什么会在市场中存在，以及企业的边界应该怎样确定的经济理论，自科斯对新古典的企业理论提出诘难并提出了企业是对市场的替代这一企业的契约理论以来，经济学家沿着交易费用的主线探究了企业与市场的关系，又沿着产权的主线探讨了企业内部的权利关系。随着现代企业中所有权和控制权的分离，企业理论的研究越来越注重对企业的利益相关者的作用的探讨。     

企业契约问题探析

契约理论为人们认识市场体制,特别是企业组织制度提供了一个全新的视角。由科斯开创的“企业契约理论。已成为用以研究现代企业理论最核心的方法。本文力求从完全契约和不完全契约、默认契约、激励契约等方面全面把握契约理论的内涵,在此基础上,深入认识企业契约的本质特征,进而作出了企业契约不完全性的理论解释。     

企业组织剩余理论——一个理论的创新

企业是契约的耦合,是信用形式、法律形式、制度形式、道德形式的契约.企业契约分为企业组织契约和企业经营契约.企业组织契约在完成产品契约中起重要作用,企业在产吕产易中实现剩余价值.于是,一个创新理论的提出--企业组织制条理论.     

产业组织演进的理论阐释及其政策含义——基于动态演化视角

20世纪90年代以来,产业组织领域呈现出新的变化特征。传统的静态均衡分析模式很难对现实作出合理解释。演化组织理论运用系统、动态、演化的观点,从资源、能力、惯例等方面重新解释了企业边界、内部组织和产业组织的异质性、复杂性和多样性。从动态演化的视角重新审视产业组织政策,竞合范式就有了合理的经济学解释。     

Pleasure and belief in Hume's Decision Process

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to introduce explicitly pleasure and belief in what aims at being a Humean theory of decision, like the one developed in Diaye and Lapidus (2005a). Although we support the idea that Hume was in some way a hedonist – evidently different from Bentham's or Jevons' way – we lay emphasis less on continuity than on the specific kind of hedonism encountered in Hume's writings (chiefly the Treatise, the second Enquiry, the Dissertation, or some of his Essays). Such hedonism clearly contrasts to its standard modern inheritance, expressed by the relation between preferences and utility.

The reason for such a difference with the usual approach lies in the mental process that Hume puts to the fore in order to explain the way pleasure determines desires and volition. Whereas pleasure is primarily, in Hume's words, an impression of sensation, it takes place in the birth of passions as reflecting an idea of pleasure, whose “force and vivacity” is precisely a “belief”, transferred to the direct passions of desire or volition that come immediately before action. As a result, from a Humean point of view, “belief” deals with decision under risk or uncertainty, as well as with intertemporal decision and indiscrimination problems.

The latter are explored within a formal framework, and it is shown that the relation of pleasure is transformed by belief into a non-empty class of relations of desire, among which at least one is a preorder.     

Globalization,Neoliberalism and the attack on social security

Neoliberal political movements advocate privatization of public pension systems. Globalization imposes pressure on nations to conform to neoliberal policy views with respect to the design and structure of social insurance, including public pension systems. The paper begins with an investigation of the economic, ethical and ideological dimensions of the privatization debates in the U.S.; it argues that privatization advocates may be largely moved by ideology, since the other reasons advanced appear weak or unfounded. The second part discusses the history of Social Security, the purposes for its creation, and some of its economic effects. Differences between public and private pension systems are considered. A brief international comparison of some aspects of public pension system finance and benefit structures is presented. The final section considers the ethical, macroeconomic and distributional implications of privatization, prefunding and payroll tax funding, and argues for a pay as you go system financed with income taxes. In order to promote equity, economic security, community, and social cohesion, public pension systems should be universal in coverage. In order to reduce the inequality, income insecurity, and aged poverty generated by market economies, public pension systems ought to be progressive: benefit/contribution ratios should be inversely proportional to income, and progressive income taxes should finance the system. To promote economic growth, the systems should be financed on a pay-as-you-go basis, and should not be prefunded except for an emergency reserve. The fiscal policy recommendations partially depend upon the theory developed by Abba Lerner in the 1940s, and recently advanced by Wynne Godley and Randy Wray: Lerner's “principle of functional finance.”     

Interest on reserves and inflation

The payment of interest on reserves has been a common practice in inflationary economies. This policy may seem paradoxical since it involves returning part of the seigniorage, generated by the inflation process, with the intention to finance the fiscal deficit. This paper argues that the motivation for this policy can be captured by the discretionary regime, where the policymaker pays interest on reserves because he is concerned with the erosion of real liquidity by inflation, which is in part beyond his control. However, this policy is an unlikely outcome in the commitment regime, where the policymaker is in full control of inflation.     

Bayesian estimation of duration models: An application of the multiperiod probit model

The multiperiod probit model is presented and Bayesian estimation using the Gibbs sampler with data augmentation is described. As an empirical illustration, the multiperiod probit model is then used to estimate a duration model using employment duration data for the Canadian province of New Brunswick. Bayesian estimation with unobserved heterogeneity is shown to be a simple extension of estimation of a duration model with no unobserved heterogeneity. More importantly, perhaps, some numerical problems encountered by other authors using Maximum Likelihood are avoided.I would like to thank M. Baker, G. Koop, A. Melino and D. Poirier for helpful comments and discussions. I would also like to thank M. Baker for providing his data.     

Scenarios and creativity: Thinking in new boxes

To be creative and make change happen, leaders must do more than simply ‘think outside the box’, as the traditional business manuals suggest, using the popular American expression. After all, the space outside the box is infinitely expansive. Moreover, there can be no guarantee that a solution to the problem will be found. The answer: ‘Think in new boxes.’ This requires developing the right new box; in other words, useful new models, a helpful new approach to a problem. That is the real art of practical creativity. This short article outlines the approach (Thinking in New Boxes) and its application to classic scenario planning with a few examples. The authors also present the ‘Expressway to Scenarios’, an approach that wins in impact and practicality what it loses in deep analysis, by having top executives involved in key steps.     

On the Role of Paradigms in Understanding Economic Globalization

Any adequate analysis of economic globalization necessarily requires fundamental understanding of the worldviews underlying the views expressed with respect to the nature and role of economic globalization. This paper is based on the premise that any worldview can be associated with one of the four basic paradigms: functionalist, interpretive, radical humanist, and radical structuralist. It argues that any view expressed with respect to economic globalization is based on one of the four paradigms or worldviews. It, therefore, discusses four views with respect to the nature and role of economic globalization which correspond to the four broad worldviews. The paper emphasizes that the four views expressed are equally scientific and informative; they look at the nature and role of economic globalization from a certain paradigmatic viewpoint. Emphasizing this example in the area of economic globalization, the paper concludes that there are opportunities for each paradigm to benefit from contributions coming from the other three paradigms.     

A Humean theory of choice of which rationality may be one consequence

For the reader who considers economic theory of choice as a special case of a more general theory of action, Hume's discussion of the determinants of action in the Treatise of Human Nature (1739?–?40), in the Enquiry on Human Understanding (1748) and in the Dissertation on Passions (1757) deserves attention. However, according to some modern commentators, Hume does not seem to have given any evidence that would favour what nowadays we would consider as the kind of rationality involved in modern theories of rational choice. On the contrary, this paper arrives at the conclusion that consistency between preferences and choice, like the usual properties of completeness and transitivity, may be considered as outcomes of a mental process, described by means of a decision algorithm that aims to represent Hume's theory of choice.     

The concept of freedom and its relation to economic development--a critical appreciation of the work of Amartya Sen

Following a brief review of the conception of freedom as employedin economic discourse, this paper focuses on the evolution ofthe concept of freedom in the work of Amartya Sen. It tracesthe development of Sen's thought from the capability analysisof the late 1970s to his more recent separation of freedom intoits opportunity and process aspects. While broadly appreciativeof Sen's development of the concept of positive freedom, thepaper identifies some difficulties arising from his definitionof capability as a set of options as well as from his separationof the opportunity and process aspects of freedom. Aspects ofthe relationship between Sen's conception of freedom and thatof Marx are discussed briefly in the context of Sen's recentdiscussion of the market as a source of freedom.     

How chaebol restructuring after the 1997 crisis has affected corporate decision and performance in Korea: debt financing,ownership structure,and investment

ABSTRACT

Korean chaebol firms, characterized by excessive debt financing and overinvestment, experienced restructuring after the 1997 crisis. By reducing debt financing and thus overinvestment, they tried to reorganize financing structure and ownership structure. Chaebols’ debt reduction turns out to have improved performance. However, polarization between chaebol and non-chaebol firms has become more significant. Even after the crisis, firms that give higher cash flows to a controlling shareholder take more capital investment, indicating that agency problems still exist within chaebols. Chaebol-affiliated firms continue to be more active in R&D than non-chaebol firms. However, the pattern is limited to the group of top 10 chaebols after the crisis.

Abbreviations: KFTC: Korea Fair Trade Commission     

Types of technology

Technology is a concept rife with confusion. Here, I argue that technologies can be distinguished as a combination of type of producer and an idealized artefact life history. Using this definition, a number of technologies are identified. The first technology historically, in the Protostomes, was the production of individual or family dwellings. Next came objects such as spider webs for trapping prey. Stigmergy followed, with the social insects, as a collective endeavour to construct a mega-structure using simple rules of accretion. Some birds and primates began to make tools, or simple technological objects whose function is closely related to their form. Humans are distinguished by their ability to make machines. Traditional technology took place once people voluntarily organised into groups with specialised knowledge to produce more complex objects and structures. Monumental objects like ceremonial pyramids came with the command economies of the early agrarian societies, which also resulted in a new category of artefact, the network. Finally, with modern civilizations came ad hoc accretion, or population-level adding-on, to make truly complex technological systems. Developing a theoretical framework within which artefacts, production processes and ways of interacting with them are identified should help the study of technology to become more scientific.