基于公平心理偏好的投资博弈——敲竹杠问题的一个行为解决

敲竹杠问题是不完全合约理论的中心话题,经典文献认为,如果合约是不完全的,当事人的专用性投资会引发敲竹杠风险从而导致无效率的专用性投资。但是,关于敲竹杠问题的文献通常假定事后谈判结果对事前投资成本不敏感。通过在雇佣双方的投资博弈中引入投资成本相关性这种合作的谈判方式,将传统敲竹杠模型中影响谈判力的因素与当事人对公平偏好的行为因素二者融合,本文证明:与传统的投资博弈相比,在投资成本影响企业(雇员)谈判力的情况下,双方有更强的专用性人力资本投资激励。雇佣双方所面临的敲竹杠风险取决于双方的初始谈判力,且双方有可能在事前做出社会最优甚至过度的投资。这也从一个方面解释了现实中大量存在的有效投资现象。     

替代性机制与企业所有权安排

根据各种资源创造组织租金的能力 ,本文提出了边际组织租金、异质性、重要性和次重要性等新概念。企业要发展壮大 ,就必须经常拥有重要性资源 ,而要经常拥有重要性资源 ,就必须在完善的外部市场的基础上 ,建立健全企业内替代性机制 ,以新的或更高的重要性资源替代已失去重要性的资源 ,这是具有自组织功能的企业所应具有的新陈代谢行为。在健全的企业内替代性机制条件下 ,资源在市场中的竞争程度和在企业内的重要性是影响资源所有者谈判力的两个主要变量 ,直接影响到企业组织租金的分配。企业组织租金的分配是企业的所有权安排的主要内容。     

企业租金、专有性贡献与分配制度

党的十六大报告中明确指出 ,深化分配制度改革 ,应“确立劳动、资本、技术和管理等生产要素按贡献参与分配的原则”。可以说 ,这一分配原则 ,也是我们理解企业分配制度的关键和核心。本文借助“企业租金”这个全新的视角和工具 ,分析探讨了企业中按“贡献”分配的基本内涵和主要逻辑 ,提出要素按专用性和专有性贡献分别参与“企业基本租金”和“企业净租金”的分配观点 ,并应用之对企业分配制度进行了分析。     

中央计划经济下的产权和制度变迁理论

<正> 一引论中央计划经济体制以一种命令一服从的强制方式界定了每个经济当事人的损益边界。这是一种特定的产权安排。由于不允许当事人之间的自愿谈判和交易,所以计划体制趋于使这一产权安排下的损益效应变成一种“外部性”,即一部分当事人享有“计划权利”,而另一部分当事人则承担并履行“计划义务”。这种外部性的存在是中央计划经济下一切经济扭曲的     

新经济中的虚拟一体化组织

虚拟一体化是现代企业有效利用社会资源的一种常用组织形式。它不仅增强了企业的柔性和敏捷性,降低了交易成本和管理成本,而且其协调机制---隐性契约在克服因企业追求降低生产成本而提高资产专用性所引起的垄断租金和专用性准租金方面比纵向一体化和明示契约都具有优势。     

交易费用与企业所有权分配合约的选择

企业所有权分配是一个动态的谈判过程,它与制度环境和当事人的谈判力有关。一个契约安排要实现公平与效率的统一,必须确保充分的契约自由。企业所有权分配可以表达为不同类型契约的选择,它主要考虑交易费用的大小。本文把交易费用分解为契约费用和监督费用,均衡的契约安排是权衡这两种交易费用的结果,目的是最大限度地节约交易费用。针对不同的交易技术结构,对简单交易来说,单边治理合约是相对有效的;而对复杂交易来说,共同治理合约可能更有效。进一步考虑契约的产出效应,共同治理合约能带来更高的交易效率     

论转型经济背景下中国公司治理模式的演进趋势

转型经济国家的企业改革实践，引致了大量对最佳企业治理模式探求的文献。基于不完全契约理论的企业产权理论的两代模型在企业所有权安排的分析框架中，较单纯地强调了当时人的谈判，而简省了企业契约参与人的制度环境约束。我们则把此作为企业契约参与人谈判力的一个重要因素，试图在一个简化的谈判模型中把制度环境的因素纳入企业契约的参与人谈判力函数中去，从而内生地解释制度环境对当时人谈判力的影响。我们的结论是影响一个国家选择公司治理模式的因素有很多，经济政治方面的因素，也有文化历史等因素的影响。尤其对于一个正处于经济转型期的中国而言，起始条件往往制约和决定了发展路径。其中最主要的因素体现在三个方面，一是路径依赖；二是法律环境；三是所有制。最后提出了转型经济国家特别是我国的公司治理模式改革应注意的若干问题。     

企业所有权制度的安排机制

企业是人力资本所有与非人力资本所有组成的一组不完备的契约。人力资本所有与非人力资本所有在企业中的地位，取决于他们谈判实力的大小，而决定“谈判力”大小的关键因素是各生产要素的相对稀缺程度及其相互间可替代性的大小。受生产力法则和分工法则的制约，生产要素不断呈现细分的态势。在不同的条件下，要素的相对稀缺程度会不断发生变化，进而使得企业所有权制度在时空上呈现出极大的多样性。这便是企业所有权制度演进的内在安排机制。由于企业家才能是最稀缺的资源，因此随着社会生产力水平的不断提高，人力资本在企业合约中的重要性会得到不断地提升。     

外部选择权增加一定会刺激专用性投资吗*——基于云南烟草合同的微观证据

学术界对于外部选择权和专用性投资的关系一直存有争论。产权理论（主要是GHM模型）认为当事人外部选择权增加会提高谈判力,从而提高参与人的专用性投资激励,这是产权成为最重要激励工具的基本逻辑。然而,另一些学者则认为,当参与人外部选择权是紧的时候,外部选择权增加反而会降低参与人的投资激励。这意味着,产权不一定能够提高激励。本文在梳理已有文献争论的基础上,构建理论模型重新定义了外部选择权的范围,并在非合作博弈的框架下,得到与后一部分学者一致的结论：外部选择权的增加反而会降低参与人专用性投资的激励。同时,笔者使用云南烟草合同的微观数据,实证分析了外部选择权和专用性投资之间的关系,发现两者呈负相关关系,这进一步支持了该结论。本文的发现与主流的产权理论有所不同,具有一定的理论贡献和现实意义。     

"电荒"的产权经济学解读

本文指出电力产品是一种特殊的产品,这决定了电力企业和电力产业组织具有一些独特的经济性质。这些性质造成了对专用性投资可剥削准租金的挤占的可能性。这又在某种程度上解释了我国“电荒”的电力投资不足发生的原因。     

BARGAINING OVER TAXES AND ENTITLEMENTS IN THE ERA OF UNEQUAL GROWTH

Entitlements have become an increasing component of total government spending in the United States over the last six decades. Using a political-economy model where parties bargain over taxes and entitlements, we argue that such dynamics can be explained by two factors: “unequal growth,” where top earners became richer while the income of the bottom 50% stagnated, and budget rules that provide bargaining power to low-income earners through a “status quo effect.” In a model calibrated to the United States, we show that sustained bargaining power by a party representing the poor results in a rising share of entitlements consistent with the data.     

研发合作中的产权结构与投资激励

不完全合同背景下,产权分配在参与方的投资决策中至关重要。利用产权理论讨论了研发合作中的序贯投资决策和创新的产权分配问题。研究表明,最优产权结构随着参与方的谈判力变动,谈判力较低的一方单独拥有产权能够平衡其投资积极性;随着投资关系专用性程度的增加,最优产权为联合产权在产品开发者谈判力区间的范围更广。为了提高双方合作效率,可考虑采用由一个产品开发者出价并按照研究单位投资积极性分配初始产权的期权合同。比较分析发现：期权合同能够缓解投资不足问题,并进一步提高双方合作效率。     

The Uncertainty of Academic Rent and Income Inequality: The OECD Panel Evidence

The article presents an alternative view on the education—income inequality relationship, which calls into question the neoclassical claim that education increases labor productivity and hence contributes to a higher output, wage and consequently more even income distribution. In the context of public policies, education needs to be seen not only as a factor of income mobility, but also as a “positional good,” which benefits graduates at the expense of non-graduates. Education generates “academic rent,” by which we mean uneven remuneration of workers based on academic signs of distinctions that do not necessarily reflect differences in productivity. Using the robust panel model on a sample of OECD (Organization of Economic Co-operation and Development) countries from 1980 to 2015, we show that investments in human capital lead to lower inequality, but overinvestments tends to increase income inequality, which may be related to academic rent. In discussing this result, we consider that uncertainty of academic rent under the condition of a rapid transformation of the workplace caused by the fourth industrial revolution.     

Corruption and legislature size: Evidence from Brazil

This paper studies whether and how legislatures affect political corruption. Using a regression discontinuity design in the context of Brazilian municipalities, we find a positive causal impact of council size on corruption levels, as detected by random federal audits. This indicates that an extra councilor represents an additional political actor potentially interested in diverting public resources, which we define as a rent extraction effect. However, we find further evidence that, in some contexts, larger councils enhance the representation of opposition parties and effectively increase monitoring over the executive, attenuating the rent extraction effect. Namely, in municipalities where opposition parties are typically underrepresented, the additional seat in the council is absorbed by the opposition and corruption outcomes do not worsen. In addition, only in such context, mayors are more commonly sentenced for misconduct in office by judicial authorities, whose investigations anecdotally often originates from councilors denouncing mayors to local courts. Overall, our findings show that legislature size is detrimental to corruption outcomes but less so where the representation of opposition parties improves with the enlargement of the legislature.     

Profit-sharing in a unionized cournot duopoly

The main purpose of this paper is to analyze when it is optimal for firms in a unionized duopoly to introduce profit-sharing. It is shown that a firm only prefers a profit-sharing system if its own union does not have “too much” bargaining power, and if the union in the other firm does not have “too much” bargaining power. However, if a firm introduces profit-sharing, the employment increases, and the price in the goods market decreases. Hence, even if it is not in the own interest of a firm to introduce profit-sharing, it may be in the interest of the society.     

The role of information in different bargaining protocols

We analyze a bargaining protocol recently proposed in the literature vis-à-vis unconstrained negotiation. This new mechanism extracts “gains from trade” inherent in the differing valuation of two parties towards various issues where conflict exists. We assess the role of incomplete vs. complete information in the efficiency achieved by this new mechanism and by unconstrained negotiation. We find that unconstrained negotiation does best under a situation of complete information where the valuations of both bargaining parties are common knowledge. Instead, the newly proposed mechanism does best in a situation with incomplete information. The sources of inefficiencies in each of the two cases arise from the different strategic use of the available information.     

UNION–FIRM BARGAINING AGENDA REVISITED: WHEN UNIONS HAVE DISTINCT PREFERENCES

In this paper we revisit the issue of the scope of bargaining between firms and unions by considering a more general union's utility function with distinct preferences and sequential negotiations. First, we compare exogenously given labour market institutions; i.e., right‐to‐manage (RTM) and sequential efficient bargaining (SEB). We show that the conventional wisdom, which states that firms always prefer RTM, no longer holds. In fact, when unions are adequately wage aggressive and have strong enough bargaining power, firms may prefer SEB negotiations; however, firms switch their preference to RTM when unions are very strong. Moreover, we show that a conflict of interest between the parties may emerge when unions are sufficiently employment oriented as well as sufficiently wage aggressive and not too strong or too weak in bargaining. Second, we analyse the endogenous choice of the bargaining agenda. We show that a rich plethora of equilibria may occur and new situations of conflict/agreement of interests between the bargaining parties arise in particular when unions are sufficiently wage‐aggressive.     

Respecting entitlements in legislative bargaining: A matter of preference or necessity?

We investigate whether fairness concerns overrule strategic behaviour in legislative bargaining with entitlements. In a lab experiment, we vary bargaining power by using either majority rule or dictator rule to implement a division. We apply coarse measures in order to assess whether entitlements are respected. Our results show that with experience over one third of proposers make “extreme” offers, assigning at most 10% of the surplus to partners whose consent is not needed under the respective rule. Having observed extreme outcomes in the past increases the likelihood of own extreme proposals. Overall, we find significant limitations in the acknowledgment for others' entitlements, in particular for groups in which individual contributions differ.     

GAME-THEORETIC ANALYSIS OF CHINA's WTO ACCESSION

Abstract.  This paper studies the determination of split of total surplus among the negotiating parties (member countries and the acceding country) in a WTO accession negotiation using a sequential bargaining model. In particular, we are interested in the effect of the most-favored-nation (MFN) principle on the negotiation outcome. The MFN principle says that any tariff reduction offered by the applicant for accession has to be automatically granted to all existing members. The model suggests that it is quite plausible that China's share of surplus is more when MFN is in place.     

The welfare effect of bargaining power in the licensing of a cost-reducing technology

This study considers licensing of a cost-reducing technology through bargaining between a technology-holding firm and its rival firm in a Cournot duopoly market. To consider the relative bargaining power of both firms, the asymmetric Nash bargaining solution is applied as our solution. Then, we specify the combinations of lump-sum fee and per-unit royalty that are realized through bargaining, and examine the effect on social welfare of the technology-holding firm’s bargaining power. The principal findings are as follows. Regardless of the technology-holding firm’s bargaining power, pure royalty licensing is carried out, and social welfare is non-increasing in its bargaining power. In our model, licensing through a take-it-or-leave-it offer, which is often assumed in the literature, is regarded as the case in which the technology-holding firm has full bargaining power. Thus, the result on social welfare implies that the take-it-or-leave-it offer licensing mechanism leads to the socially worst outcome.