Democracy and competition: Vertical differentiation and labor in a general equilibrium model

We consider a general equilibrium model with vertical preferences and one or two firms, where workers and consumers are differentiated, respectively, by their sensitivity to effort and their preference for quality. The question in this paper is whether a decentralized choice through majority vote would lead to more or less competition. We compare the duopoly and the monopoly cases from the viewpoint of each individual, then we deduce the choice of the majority. We prove that, under concentrated ownership (where owners have a null density), duopoly is always preferred by the majority; while under egalitarian ownership (where firms are equally shared by all the population), the choice of the majority depends on the relative size of workers' and consumers' segments.     

More is better: evidence that joint patenting leads to quality innovation

Joint ownership of a patent is most often viewed by firms as a second-best option compared to single, monopoly ownership. However, the results of this article suggest that there may be reason for businesses and policymakers to incentivize joint patenting behaviour. This is because, joint patent ownership is found to positively impact the quality of an innovation (as measured by forward patent citations). In addition, the degree of quality increases with the number of patent owners. Since past research confirms the important links between patent quality and ongoing innovation, and between innovation and growth, those factors that impact patent quality are deserving of attention. Economic research on joint patenting is currently limited, but we hope to shed light on the importance of expanding dialogue on this topic.     

Organizational transparency and power in firm ownership networks

When public institutions do not support information disclosure and contract enforcement, controlling owners may compensate by setting up ownership networks that facilitate the exchange of resources and alignment of interests. We examine how firms’ controlling owners draw power from ownership networks to provide access to resources for or to expropriate resources from their firms. Horizontal power originates from network centrality and is associated with resource access whereas vertical power originates from principal-principal agency conflicts and is associated with exploitation of minority shareholders. We highlight the impact of horizontal and vertical power through their interaction effects with transparency and disclosure (TD) practices on fixed investments and performance in Russian firms. We find that TD and horizontal power or connectedness are substitutes, while whereas TD and vertical power are complements in their effects on fixed investment and firm performance. Without a strong commitment to TD, powerful owners may thus deprive the firm of productive investments.     

Foreign penetration and undesirable competition

This paper examines how the order of the firms' moves affects the social efficiency with foreign ownership and free entry in a mixed oligopoly market. We firstly show that when the foreign shareholding ratio is low, the entry of private followers will lead to a lower consumer welfare and higher social welfare, while the profit of the incumbent nationalized firm is higher under entry than under no entry. Further, we find that there always exists the problem of excessive entry under public leadership regardless of the degree of foreign ownership. Such result is generated by the complementary role played by the leading public firm and the strength of business-stealing effect. Our results thus have important implications for industrial and market-opening policies.     

The quiet life of a monopolist: The efficiency losses of monopoly reconsidered

We study the efficiency losses of monopoly in a model where the firm’s total cost of production decreases with the manager’s effort to control cost. In contrast to the existing analyses of oligopolistic and monopolistically competitive markets that find an ambiguous relationship between competition intensity and managerial slack, we demonstrate that, under the same kind of cost condition, monopoly unambiguously reduces effort level and, in the case where ownership and control are separate, magnifies the effects of the moral hazard problem. Furthermore, under an alternative cost condition monopoly raises effort level rather than reducing it. In such a situation the separation of ownership and control may mitigate the productive inefficiency of monopoly.     

对社会主义和谐社会生产力与生产关系的再认识--基于生产资料所有制形式的分析

在劳动力市场非均衡状态下生产资料所有者能够获得消费者剩余,生产资料的私有制形式导致贫富差距。在劳动力市场均衡状态下生产资料所有者的消费者剩余消失,生产资料的私有制形式并不必然导致生产资料所有者占有劳动剩余产品。劳动产品在劳动者之间分配的合理性和生产资料计划配置的合理性是生产资料公有制能够促进生产力发展的两个假设前提。     

Partial Ownership For The Public Firm And Competition

This paper investigates the issue of partial ownership (partial privatization) of a state-owned public enterprise. We elaborate on the framework of Matsumura (1998) by allowing for managerial inefficiency, and show that under moderate conditions partial ownership is a reasonable choice of government in a monopoly market as well as in a mixed duopoly market, where a public firm competes with a profit-maximizing private firm. We also provide some economic rationale on the result that neither full privatization nor full nation-alization is optimum.     

The Emergence of Concentrated Ownership Structures in East Germany: the implications for enterprise restructuring ∗

In the transitional economies of East and Central Europe, privatization is widely considered essential for transforming the large state-owned enterprises. However, eager to expose the public enterprises to ‘hard budget constraints’, economists have neglected the importance of who the owners are. Studies of ownership structures and post-privatization restructuring in east Germany provide evidence that ownership matters for transformation success. The adoption of west German institutions in the east and the sale of state industrial property in concentrated shares to ‘insider’ investors seem to have created good conditions for the long-term committed investments essential for the rebuilding of tangible and intangible assets in east German enterprises. However, the control structures of a sample of enterprises reveal a wide range of investment strategies between types of corporate investors. Just as legal and financial institutions set constraints on ownership structure, the ownership structure sets constraints on the range of investment choices. Whether committed investments occur will depend on constrained strategic decisions of the new private owners.     

混合所有制经济的理论阐释与发展路径选择

本文对混合所有制经济的性质、发展混合所有制经济的目的进行了阐释,尝试澄清目前对混合所有制经济的模糊认识。笔者认为,混合所有制经济在微观上是一种资本组织形式,并不是一种所有制形式,发展混合所有制经济的目的是发展生产力,发展混合所有制经济的意义在于实现公有制经济和非公经济相互取长补短、相互促进、共同发展。发展混合所有制经济应实行“四线并进”,重点是推进垄断行业改革。     

论人工智能生成发明的可专利性及权利归属

当前，人工智能发明对专利客体范围、专利“三性”审查标准及专利权属制度造成巨大冲击。就专利客体而言，在“算法＋技术”规则的指引下，可将人工智能生成的技术方案明确为方法类专利客体；在专利“三性”审查方面，借鉴人工智能技术中立优势对相关发明进行“新式审查”，可以化解对传统审查方式的冲击；在专利权属制度设计上，基于产业政策和利益平衡考量，构建以人工智能投资者为核心、辅之以意思自治原则的专利权属制度成为必然。     

Monopoly Power and Distribution in Fragmented Markets: The Case of Groundwater

This paper examines monopoly power in the market for groundwater (irrigation water extracted by private tubewells), a market characterized by barriers to entry and spatial fragmentation. In Pakistan's Punjab region, groundwater and tenancy contracts are often interlinked, with share-tenants gaining access to water through the use of their landlord's tubewell. An analysis of groundwater transactions shows that tenants of tubewell owners are charged lower prices than other customers. Tubewell owners and their tenants also use considerably more groundwater on their plots than other farmers. Using detailed price and quantity data, the efficiency and distributional implications of this monopoly power are explored.     

Public Monopoly,Mixed Oligopoly and Productive Efficiency

In general, the introduction of competition into the public sector seems to lead to higher cost‐efficiency in service production. However, there are examples of substantial cost increases in some areas. In this paper, using a mixed oligopoly model, we investigate the effects of deregulation on the cost‐reducing incentives of a public firm. Our results show that a firm that is a public monopoly has greater incentive to conduct cost‐reducing investment than a public firm within mixed oligopoly market.     

Bertrand competition when firms hold passive ownership stakes in one another

We show that the Bertrand oligopoly model with cost asymmetries may admit multiple Nash equilibria when firms hold passive ownership stakes in each other. The equilibrium price may be as high as the monopoly price of the most efficient firm.     

Incentives and managerial effort under competitive pressure: An experiment

We investigate how increased competition affects firm owners׳ incentives and managers׳ efforts in a laboratory experiment. Each owner offers a compensation scheme to his manager in two different conditions: under monopoly and under Cournot duopoly. Following acceptance of the compensation, the manager chooses an effort level to increase the probability of a cost-reduction which affects the firm׳s profit. According to standard theoretical predictions the entry of a rival firm in a monopolistic industry affects negatively both the incentive compensation and the effort level. Our experimental findings show that the entry of a rival firm has two effects on managerial effort: an internalization effect which affects positively the level of effort and an income effect which has a negative impact on effort. The combined outcome of these two effects is neutral with respect to managerial effort: we observe that when competition reduces the firm׳s profit, the owner reacts by offering lower incentives but despite the lower incentives the manager still accepts the contract offer and exerts the same level of effort than under the monopoly condition.     

Debt financing,soft budget constraints,and government ownershipEvidence from China1

Debt financing is expected to improve the quality of corporate governance, but we find, using a large sample of public listed companies (PLCs) from China, that an increase in bank loans increases the size of managerial perks and free cash flows and decreases corporate efficiency. We find that bank lending facilitates managerial exploitation of corporate wealth in government‐controlled firms, but constrains managerial agency costs in firms controlled by private owners. We argue that the failure of corporate governance may derive from the shared government ownership of lenders and borrowers, which nurtures soft budget constraints.     

Ownership, efficiency, and political interference

Privatisation is often explained by a desire to achieve efficiency. Some authors propose that the main reason for inferior performance under public ownership is interference from politicians who promote output and employment instead of profits to please voters. Western state-owned firms however typically operate in imperfectly competitive markets, or even in natural monopolies. Private ownership then leads to underprovision. This paper presents conditions under which political interference yields higher welfare than under commercial objectives, and vice versa. If effort affects utility, interference may be beneficial in a seemingly perfect market.     

How former business owners fare in the labor market? Job assignment and earnings

This study uses detailed longitudinal matched employer–employee data to examine the impact of entrepreneurial experience on job assignments, careers, and wages. The results suggest that there are significant differences in career mobility between former business owners and workers who were always wage employees. Former business owners enter firms at higher job levels and progress faster up the hierarchy than wage employees without entrepreneurial experience. The majority of the former business owners find jobs in small firms. The return to business ownership experience is lower than the return to wage employee experience, thus suggesting that the labor market imposes a penalty for business ownership experience.     

Producer and Consumer Interests, the State-Owned Pipeline, and Public Authority Pricing of Natural Gas*

This paper considers producer and consumer interests when state ownership of a pipeline provides a public authority with monopoly and monopsony power. In contrast with the producer/consumer conflict in the regulatory setting where self-interested authorities choose the price at which producers and consumers directly transact with one another, in the pipeline case producers and consumers have a commonality of interest which is sustained even if the authorities take the view that it is politically inexpedient to take advantage of monopoly power with respect to consumers.     

Public ownership of banks and economic growth

In an influential article, La Porta et al. (2002) argue that public ownership of banks is associated with lower GDP growth. We show that this relationship does not hold for all countries, but depends on a country's initial conditions, in particular its financial development and political institutions. Public ownership is harmful only if a country has low financial development and low institutional quality. The negative impact of public ownership on growth fades quickly as the financial and political system develops. In highly developed countries, we find no or even positive effects. Policy conclusions for individual countries are likely to be misleading if such heterogeneity is ignored.     

经济转轨中自然垄断行业规制改革——竞争、所有制与激励机制选择

竞争与所有制改革是目前自然垄断行业规制改革的主要趋势.但原有的理论和经验都是针对发达国家而言,对于转轨国家如何协调经济转轨与自然垄断行业改革却没有现成的理论与经验.所以,本文从转轨国家自然垄断行业引入竞争可能性以及所有制改革模式的选择入手,研究在加入策略性激励机制后竞争与所有制模式的不同组合对自然垄断企业绩效的影响.研究发现,转轨国家自然垄断行业改革进程取决于转轨国家市场发育程度以及改革的初始条件;混合所有制的企业竞争模式比完全私有化的社会福利水平要高,也更适合于转轨国家自然垄断行业改革的所有制选择模式.