The Welfare state and the elderly in Europe

The recent Enron-type scandals have reinvigorated the corporate governance debate. The purpose of this paper is to situate that debate in a much older and more fundamental debate about the organization of production. This paper presents a modern reconstruction of a property rights argument for the democratic firm (a firm whose legal members are the people working in it). The old “fruits of their labor” argument is reformulated using the ordinary responsibility principle that legal responsibility is to be imputed to whoever is in fact responsible. Far from conflicting with private property, the responsibility principle provides grounds for the just appropriation of private property. However, there is a conflict with the legal contract for the renting of human beings, the employment contract, in view of thede facto nontransferability of responsibility. This recognition of the invalidity of the employment contract can be independently arrived at using a modern reconstruction of an inalienable rights argument from the Reformation and Enlightenment. Finally these arguments are applied to the corporate governance debate to suggest a rechartering of corporations so that shareholders become debt-holders and the people working in a corporation become its legal members.     

The responsibility principle and the democratic firm

The recent Enron-type scandals have reinvigorated the corporate governance debate. The purpose of this paper is to situate that debate in a much older and more fundamental debate about the organization of production. This paper presents a modern reconstruction of a property rights argument for the democratic firm (a firm whose legal members are the people working in it). The old “fruits of their labor” argument is reformulated using the ordinary responsibility principle that legal responsibility is to be imputed to whoever is in fact responsible. Far from conflicting with private property, the responsibility principle provides grounds for the just appropriation of private property. However, there is a conflict with the legal contract for the renting of human beings, the employment contract, in view of thede facto nontransferability of responsibility. This recognition of the invalidity of the employment contract can be independently arrived at using a modern reconstruction of an inalienable rights argument from the Reformation and Enlightenment. Finally these arguments are applied to the corporate governance debate to suggest a rechartering of corporations so that shareholders become debt-holders and the people working in a corporation become its legal members.     

军民协同创新中知识产权归属问题研究

军民协同创新活动中,知识产权归属问题是影响协同创新成效的重要因素。据此,提出计划主导、计划市场共同作用和市场主导3种军民协同创新模式,分析了军民协同创新知识产权归属的主要问题。计划主导、计划市场共同作用、市场主导3种模式下的知识产权归属应分别坚持“平衡利益、鼓励创新”、“注重效率、侧重长远”、“经济效率优先”原则,相应地采取“法律规范、兼顾合约”、“章程式契约”、“尊重市场、契约优先”的思路进行制度设计。同时,还要从军民融合深度发展战略、知识产权保护环境、配套政策举措、法律制度等方面提供外部环境保障和激励。     

Knowledge at work: Some neoliberal anachronisms

With a predilection for market solutions, neoliberalism upholds that the individual is generally the best judge of his or her interests. Yet markets are never universally applied as a mechanism of allocation and there are reasons, in principle, why capitalism will always have “missing markets.” Concentrating on the application and appropriateness of neoliberal theory to the workplace, this article argues that firms are not markets, despite some tendencies in modern theory to conflate the two. The employment contract is a key characteristic of modern firms, but neoliberal theory is often silent on the distinction between an employment contract and a contract for services, and largely ignores the asymmetrical rights of authority within contracts of employment. Furthermore, the social nature of knowledge represents a challenge to neoliberal theory and policy, because it sometimes makes it more difficult to define individual property rights. Accordingly, with the growth of the knowledge economy, neoliberalism to some extent is an anachronism.     

正确认识利益相关论者的企业产权和社会责任观

"利益相关者"理论描述了企业同其他社会主体的联系,却没有看清各种不同关系的实质,以它作为诉求企业所有权的根据,混淆了不同的产权主体和产权客体,颠倒了所有权与契约关系的地位和作用,分不清不同经济关系的处理原则,在产权理论上产生一系列错误.另一方面,它指出企业不可能离开社会的支持,必须处理好同其他社会主体,特别是企业职工的关系,为改善企业的经营管理,树立企业的社会责任感,构建正常的市场关系,作出有益的启示.但是,社会主义公有制内部的利益关系已经大大超越了在资本主义土壤产生的"利益相关者"理论所涉及的内容.只有它才是构建社会主义和谐社会的可靠基础.以社会主义关系及其形成的思维去论证"利益相关者"理论,或者以这种理论去解释和处理社会主义公有制的内部关系,都是不可取的.     

低碳经济下企业社会责任审计模式研究

在低碳经济成为全球经济主旋律、碳交易市场蓬勃发展的今天,企业契约机制中的产权主体对企业低碳经济下社会责任履行情况披露要求日益提高,呈爆发式增长的社会责任报告的发布使低碳经济下企业社会责任审计活动越来越呈现其重要性.本文基于契约论与产权动因论视角,从低碳经济下企业运营过程的各种特征出发,认为低碳经济下社会责任审计模式应从审计主体、审计内容及审计程序与方法上进行构建.     

生育率下降背景下高等教育扩张与大学生就业困难——从“98亚洲金融危机”到2008“次贷金融危机”

运用人口社会学视角对两次金融危机背景下的大学生就业问题进行探讨,尝试从宏观就业市场的人口队列效应、教育规模的"非常规"扩张到后危机时代的产业结构调整维度论证金融危机本身这一"突发性"的外部因素对大学生就业的影响程度。只有深化改革、完善市场调节机制,大学生就业难的深层次矛盾才可能因为这次金融危机获得纾解的时间与机会。教育及其他一系列公共事业投入与发展规划需将宏观人口发展战略纳入其中。     

在市场经济体制下遗属 供养不应该再是企业的责任

在中国计划经济时代,企业是国家或政府的附属物,所以企业职工也就成了国家工作人员。企业必须为政府承担职工非因工死亡遗属的抚恤责任。在市场经济体制下,劳动力已经回归了其特殊商品的属性,劳动力资源通过市场实现合理配置,企业与职工的劳动关系实质是在劳动合同契约下的劳动力的买卖关系。企业职工因病或非因工死亡后,死者与企业的劳动关系也就自然终止,然而按照现行政策规定,却还要企业去承担死者遗属的供养责任,这显然违背了市场经济的基本法则;遗属抚恤救济的责任主体应该政府,不应该再是企业的责任。     

订单农业履约率的概率辨析

农业远期合约是一种具有局限性和偶遇性特征的交易契约,我国的“订单农业”合约中的双方处于不完全信息状态,形成了基于信息非对称导致的市场失灵。对“订单农业”中签约双方违约可能性进行了概率辨析,论述了控制农户和公司出现违约的理论和思想,提出必要先期支出、必要价格空间等指标概念和计算方法,引入了期货市场的价格发现和套期保值机制,来构建农业再生产过程的信息发现和信息传递机制,实现农业经营风险的外部转移,提高我国农业履约率。     

知识产权保护与新创企业绩效——创业导向与社会责任的中介效应

在创新驱动发展战略下,知识产权保护愈发成为企业以自主创新获取竞争优势的重要制度保障,尤其对外部资源约束下“小而弱”的新创企业具有重要意义。基于创业导向与社会责任双重视角,以2014—2018年404家创业板企业为研究对象,检验知识产权保护对企业绩效的直接促进作用,并验证创业导向、社会责任在“制度—行为—绩效”链条中的转换机制及作用过程,揭示宏观制度因素对微观企业主体的双重中介机制,完善基于新创企业情境化的研究模式,为资源约束下新创企业战略发展研究提供更加辩证的实践视角。     

DYNAMIC CONTRACTS WITH WORKER MOBILITY VIA DIRECTED ON‐THE‐JOB SEARCH

This article proposes a model with dynamic incentive contracts and on‐the‐job search in a frictional labor market. The optimal long‐term contract exhibits an increasing wage–tenure profile. With increasing wages, worker effort also increases with tenure. These two features imply that the probabilities of both voluntary and involuntary job separation decrease with both job tenure and the duration of employment. Given these results, workers experience differing labor market transitions—between employment, unemployment, and across different employers—and the equilibrium generates endogenous heterogeneity among ex ante homogeneous workers.     

INCENTIVES AND THE COST OF FIRING IN AN EQUILIBRIUM LABOR MARKET MODEL WITH ENDOGENOUS LAYOFFS*

I study the effects of firing costs in an equilibrium model of the labor market with moral hazard. Layoff is an incentive device, modeled as termination of the optimal long‐term contract. When the economy’s stock of firms is fixed, firing costs could reduce layoffs and increase worker welfare. In the long run when firms are free to enter and exit the market, firing costs generate not only lower employment, longer unemployment durations, and lower aggregate output, but also lower welfare for both employed workers and new labor market entrants.     

Regular Distributive Efficiency and the Distributive Liberal Social Contract

We consider abstract social systems of private property, made of n individuals endowed with nonpaternalistic interdependent preferences, who interact through exchanges on competitive markets and Pareto‐improving lump‐sum transfers. The transfers follow from a distributive liberal social contract defined as a redistribution of initial endowments such that the resulting market equilibrium allocation is both: (i) a distributive optimum (i.e., is Pareto‐efficient relative to individual interdependent preferences) and (ii) unanimously weakly preferred to the initial market equilibrium. We elicit minimal conditions for meaningful social contract redistribution in this setup, namely, the weighted sums of individual interdependent utility functions, built from arbitrary positive weights, have suitable properties of nonsatiation and inequality aversion; individuals have diverging views on redistribution, in some suitable sense, at (inclusive) distributive optima; and the initial market equilibrium is not a distributive optimum. We show that the relative interior of the set of social contract allocations is then a simply connected smooth manifold of dimension n ? 1. We also show that the distributive liberal social contract rules out transfer paradoxes in Arrow–Debreu social systems. We show, finally, that the liberal social contract yields a norm of collective action for the optimal provision of any pure public good.     

市场均衡就业区间与区间内两种特殊的就业失衡

现代市场经济运行中的社会均衡就业量并不只是一个孤立的点,而是一个区间。该区间具有较为复杂的性质与结构,其内部一般还存在两种特殊的、长期以来一直未引起人们注意的就业失衡－－区间内就业不足和区间内过量就业。从理论上阐明“市场均衡就业区间”的形成机理,并对其内部特殊的就业失衡进行必要的分析,将有助于我们深化对现代市场经济条件下社会就业规律的认识,同时,对在总量波动背景下进一步完善就业管理、实现充分就业,也将起到重要的理论指导作用。     

The sceptic as an economist's philosopher? Humean utility as a positive principle

Whereas in philosophy David Hume was long regarded as a negative thinker to be criticized rather than read, many thinkers interested in social and economic theory from Adam Smith onwards found key concepts, distinctions and problems as developed by Hume useful and inspiring. This applies not only to his seminal contributions to technical problems in economics. It is argued that the way in which Hume employed ‘utility as a positive principle’ (most notably in his ‘experimental’ moral theory) is of pivotal importance in this context. It allows for:

a. distinguishing between internal motifs and external circumstances and constraints; and for

b. making explicit the abstract logic of social interaction structures, mechanisms and processes.

Both are necessary conditions for employing the logic of social situations and mechanisms in the explanation of social institutions and economic processes. It moreover prepares the ground for the use of simplified or cartoon-like models of individual agency in economic and social theory, but also for its critique. On this basis, Hume's influence on various strands of social and economic thought, but also the specific differences with regard to more ‘rationalistic’ approaches (such as Hobbesianism or important versions of neoclassical economics) can be assessed more clearly.     

Termination of dynamic contracts in an equilibrium labor market model

In an equilibrium model of the labor market, workers and firms enter into dynamic contracts that can potentially last forever, but are subject to optimal terminations. Upon termination, the firm hires a new worker, and the worker who is terminated receives a termination contract from the firm and is then free to go back to the labor market to seek new employment opportunities and enter into new dynamic contracts. The model permits only two types of equilibrium terminations that resemble, respectively, the two kinds of labor market separations that are typically observed in practice: involuntary layoffs and voluntary retirements. The model allows for the simultaneous determination of a large set of important labor market variables including equilibrium unemployment and labor force participation. An algorithm is formulated for computing the model's equilibria. I then simulate the model to show quantitatively that the model is consistent with a set of important stylized facts of the labor market.     

国有产权转让中的机制设计--基于企业职工的合约选择

在国有产权转让过程中,关键是要克服国有产权本身所具有的不利于进行市场交易的特性,使其交易更符合市场原则。市场本身就是由一个个的合约所构成,是否选择签约及合约的方式是由每个参与者自己作出的。因此,国有产权转让的机制设计就是要尽量使相关的利益主体有权作出对自己有利的合约选择,并对自己的行为负责。     

Poverty Naturalized: Implications for Gender

The article illustrates how philosophical assumptions affect the theory, practice, and results of poverty analysis, to the potential detriment of women and girls. It links the income/consumption approach to poverty with naturalist normative theory, which developed historically from the moral theory of David Hume. It then traces the historical development of naturalist normative theory from Hume to modern utility theory and examines its links with the British empiricist tradition. Finally, it reviews some of the practical consequences for gender and argues that the philosophical baggage of the income/consumption poverty approach may ignore important issues for women and girls, thereby creating significant gender "gaps" in the analysis of deprivation.     

An analysis of the process generating de facto standards in the PC spreadsheet software market

This paper develops a model to analyze the emergence of de facto or market defined compatibility standards in the market for PC spreadsheet software over the period 1982–1988. The model is capable of integrating diverse fragments of empirical evidence and a number of important theoretical building blocks, in particular the analysis of gateways between different versions of the same package, product preannouncements, and diverse consumer tastes towards intrinsic quality and network externalities. The model also explores the implications of different functional forms for the relationship between installed base and the value of network externalities. The paper finds that at least some enhancements to the basic model of standards have to be incorporated to offer a reasonable approximation to developments in the PC spreadsheet software market. The simplest model of de facto standards is not able to describe developments in this market.     

四十年中国经济体制的三次革命*

改革开放40年来中国经济体制经历了三次革命，即农村家庭联产承包责任制、国有企业改革和供给侧结构性改革。家庭联产承包责任制实现了农村土地集体所有权与经营权的分离，“革”了人民公社集体生产经营体制（“大锅饭”体制）的“命”。国有企业改革依次进行了企业身份转换（企业与政府关系变革）、企业经营权变革和产权制度改革三阶段革命，使国有企业由政府的附属物转变为社会主义市场经济体制的微观主体之一。供给侧结构性改革不但是对经济结构进行调整、优化和升级，更重要的是通过进一步市场化改革和政府改革重构政府与市场关系。目前，这三次革命还远没有完成，需要加大加强加深改革开放。