演进经济学企业理论：一个理论的拓展

企业是市场经济中的一个必要组成部分,是推动经济增长的重要力量。演进经济学在研究经济体系发展变化时不可能对企业组织视而不见。尽管早期的演进经济学侧重于研究高层次的经济现象,但是,对行业的演进分析和整体经济的技术变革都需要把企业行为作为最基本的解释单位。另外,用演进经济学的逻辑分析企业在很多方面的确要优于新古典经济学以及新制度经济学。     

新制度经济学框架内的现代企业理论:局限性及思考

西方现代企业理论的产生和衍变企业作为一种经济组织形式已经有着几百年的历史了,在经济社会发展中扮演着重要角色。企业理论的演进过程基本上可以划分为两大阶段,即新古典企业理论和现代企业理论。在19世纪末形成的新古典经济学的理论中,企业是作为一种前提而存在,企业实际上是一种生产函数,它利用最优决策理论进行技术分析,对企业的假设是完全理性和利润最大化,企业本身并未得到阐述。资本和劳动只是生产要素,它们之间的关系仅是资本雇佣关系,这一命题也是作为一种前提存在而并未得到严格的证明。新古典企业理论将厂商视为一种原子来研究,…     

从企业理论的发展看企业的经济性质

新古典经济学以均衡假设为前提，企业作为一种抽象，其内部的经济性质被忽略。科斯、威廉姆森为代表的一批经济学家以交易费用为分析工具，对企业性质进行了广泛的研究，强调交易费用的节约及企业“规制”特性。企业能力理论和网络组织理论从生产知识和能力的集合互补性活动和资源依赖的角度动态地揭示了企业的性质，从企业生存发展的视角，发掘了企业新的经济意义。     

潮涌现象与发展中国家宏观经济理论的重新构建

现有宏观经济学理论以产业升级时国民经济中每个企业对于下一个有前景的产业存在何处没有共识为暗含前提,但是,由于后发优势的存在,发展中国家的企业很容易对下一个有前景的产业产生共识,投资上出现“潮涌现象”,并伴随此现象出现产能过剩和相关的一系列问题。所以,有必要放松现有的暗含前提,重新构建一套新的宏观经济理论体系,探讨投资的“潮涌现象”对发展中国家的物价、就业、经济增长和周期波动的影响,作为政府制定财政、货币、金融、外贸、产业发展等宏观经济管理政策的参考。     

新古典不可能成为中国主流经济学

运用交叉科学方法和整体主义方法论,发现新古典方法论的问题在于:方法论构建中的双重标准和社会达尔文主义、对宏观经济研究的不合理认识、认为非资本主义经济制度不是经济学的研究范畴、主张资本主义市场经济价值观和行为准则具有普适性、以新古典理性主义作为经济学研究的排他性基石、唯计量方法才是经济学研究。从新古典经济学产生、形成和发展所依赖的欧美社会特性与中国社会特性的差异看,仍处于构建中的中国经济学与其差异将是巨大的。把新古典经济学作为中国的主流经济学,不仅是方法论上的封闭系统,而且不利于中国经济学的发展。     

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。     

社会发展中的制度变迁和技术变迁

在新古典经济理论中 ,制度因素总是作为既定的前提 ,即制度结构具有外生性特征。在新古典传统的经济模型中 ,暗含的假设包括 :明确界定的私有产权 ,完备的信息结构 ,足够的激励机制以及无摩擦的交易行为。在这些既定的假设下 ,消费者遵循效用最大化原则、厂商遵循利润最大化原则进行经济活动。斯密一瓦尔拉斯一阿罗和德布鲁体系的全部努力都在于证明 ,建立在私有产权基础上的自由竞争市场制度可以实现经济效益和帕累托最优。新古典的经济增长模型也由符合这种标准的总量生产函数来描述 ,所差别的是构造生产函数的假定和形成不同而已。所以 ,…     

现代企业理论的演变:从生产属性、交易属性到内生成长

从企业理论的发展史来考察,经济学中企业理论的发展,经历了新古典经济学、新制度经济学以及演化经济学等三个阶段。企业理论的三个发展阶段,经历了一个由注重有形资源,进而发展为注重无形资源的阶段,最后达到有形资源与无形资源相结合的历史演进过程,最终显示了把企业中有形资源与无形资源结合起来分析考察的趋势,这越来越接近现实经济生活中企业的本质。     

资产专用性、“敲竹杠”与新制度贸易经济学——兼论保护主义的适度合理性

新古典自由贸易经济学是以完全竞争市场为假设前提,其中一个重要的隐含前提是各类资产具有完全通用性,可以自由进入与退出市场或产业。然而,随着世界经济的发展,资产在国际间的流动逐渐成为国际贸易中不可忽略的一个重要组成部分,资产专用性对国际贸易和投资产生重要影响,它不仅会影响国际贸易的总量和产品构成,而且还会影响一国贸易格局和贸易政策的选择。如果一国进行了资产专用性投资,就会使其在贸易谈判中陷入进退两难困境,失去讨价还价的力量,并影响其在贸易利益上的分配格局,进而严重影响一国的贸易不公平结构。从资产专用性角度探讨新制度国际贸易经济学的合理性,由新古典国际贸易经济学走向新制度国际贸易经济学,更加具有现实性。为了摆脱这种被要挟和被控制的风险,除了企业自身治理结构外,还需要政府实行一定的保护主义政策。     

论经济增长观的变迁

从重商主义到古典经济学再到新古典经济学,在分析经济增长时。都是把经济或社会财富的增长归结为现实的可计量因素。索洛的分析提供了一种启示,他的分析框架彰示着进一步揭示经济增长的剩余变量的学术价值所在。这种剩余变量,会引导着人们把对经济增长的研究视角转移到经济学以外的文化和伦理领域。     

The Washington Consensus revisited: a new structural economics perspective

The Washington Consensus reform resulted in economic collapse and stagnation in many transition economies and “lost decades” in other developing countries in 1980s and 1990s. The paper provides a new structural economics perspective of such failures. The Washington Consensus reform failed to recognize that many firms in a transition economy were not viable in an open, competitive market because those industries went against the comparative advantages determined by the economy’s endowment structure. Their survival relied on the government’s protections and subsidies through various interventions and distortions. The Washington Consensus advised the government to focus their reforms on issues related to property rights, corporate governance, government interventions, and other issues that may obstruct a firm’s normal management. Without resolving the firms’ viability problem, such reforms led to the firms’ collapse and an unintended decline and stagnation of the economy in the transition process. This paper suggests that the viability assumption in neoclassical economics be relaxed when analyzing development and transition issues in socialist, transition, and developing economies.     

'Industrial demonopolization and competition policy in Poland and Hungary': a comment'

Protestations that ‘neither neoclassical economics nor Western experience offers clear guidelines concerning optimal competition policies towards state-owned firms in a transition economy’ are overly pessimistic. Both sources suggest the importance of attacking barriers to entry into markets, especially when those barriers are associated with vertical integration or exclusive vertical contracts by already dominant enterprises. Beyond this, they demonstrate that different priorities of enforcement are appropriate in transition economies and that competition advocacy is especially important in this context.     

Soft budget constraint theories: From centralization to the market

This paper surveys the theoretical literature on the effect of soft budget constraints on economies in transition from centralization to capitalism; it also reviews our understanding of soft budget constraints in general. It focuses on the conception of the soft budget constraint syndrome as a commitment problem. We show that the two features of soft budget constraints in centralized economies – ex post renegotiation of firms' financial plans and a close administrative relationship between firms and the centre – are intrinsically related. We examine a series of theories (based on the commitment-problem approach) that explain shortage, lack of innovation in centralized economies, devolution, and banking reform in transition economies. Moreover, we argue that soft budget constraints also have an influence on major issues in economics, such as the determination of the boundaries and capital structure of a firm. Finally, we show that soft budget constraints theory sheds light on financial crises and economic growth.     

Why we need a commitment approach to environmental policy

The principal reason why economists have advocated environmental policies based on incentives is that their conception of business behavior derives from the neoclassical model of the firm. Businesses certainly do respond to profit incentives, but firms' behavior is also greatly influenced by socio-political considerations and their organizational capabilities. In recent years, a significant group of businesses that are highly innovative, competitive and socially responsible has emerged. These are not the firms that policy makers envisioned when they formulated command and control and market incentive environmental policies, i.e., control-oriented policies. Because of this, there is a need for new types of environmental policies. Thus, the first purpose of this paper is to propose a new class of environmental policies. The second purpose is to explain why the neoclassical model is deficient as a basis for environmental policy and to explicate the nature of a more appropriate model.Control-oriented policies were designed for firms that behave like neoclassical firms. For high performance organizations (HPOs), what is needed is the opposite of control-oriented policy. What is needed is an environmental policy that takes advantage of HPOs commitment, responsibility, and trustworthiness. The appropriate policy should take into account that overall environmental performance is a product not just of firm behavior but of the whole environmental system of which firms are a part. What is needed is a commitment approach to environmental policy.A commitment approach (CA) to environmental policy is first of all not a control-oriented policy. A CA is a nonregulatory approach in which firms are self-regulated. The CA is only for firms that are able to 1) make a commitment to high environmental performance and 2) develop the capabilities to meet these commitments. The environmental protection (EP) agency that administers the CA would be charged with selecting the particular “high commitment” (HC) firms that would be subject to the policy. Low and intermediate commitment firms would presumably continue to be regulated under the usual control-oriented environmental policies. The selected HC firms would be eligible for government technical assistance and information. In addition, the EP agency could aid the functioning of the environmental systems (ES) in which HC firms are embedded by, for example, providing education and information to these businesses' stakeholders. Finally, it would be necessary for the EP agency to accomplish periodic assessments of how ESs performance departs from the ideal and how these systems' operations require rectification.     

Teaching the Implicit Assumptions Underlying Firm Behavior in the Neoclassical Model

The neoclassical model imposes narrow assumptions on firm behavior and in the process hides implicit assumptions regarding the behavior of individuals. Although the firm is a complicated organization composed of many individuals, the neoclassical model simplifies its behavior to one objective—the maximization of profits. This assumption implicitly assumes that individuals within the firm subordinate their own self-interest for the firm’s benefit. A classroom activity is described which assists students in discerning whether the assumption of profit maximization fits reality.     

Firm ownership and internal labour practices in a transition economy

One feature common to many post‐socialist transition economies is a relatively compressed wage structure in the state‐owned sector. We conjecture that this compressed wage structure creates weak incentives for work effort and worker skill acquisition and thus presents adverse consequences for the entire transition economy if a substantial portion of the labour force works in the state sector. We explore firm wage incentives and worker training, as well as other labour practices and outcomes, in a transition setting with matched firm and worker data collected in one of the largest provinces of Vietnam – Ho Chi Minh City. The Vietnamese state sector exhibits a compressed wage distribution in relation to privately owned firms with foreign ownership. State wage practices stress tenure over worker productivity and their wage policies result in flatter wage–experience profiles and lower returns to education. The state work force is in greater need of formal training, a need that is in part met through direct government financing. In spite of the opportunities for government financed training and at least partly due to inefficient worker incentives, state firms, by certain measures, exhibit lower levels of labour productivity. The private sector comparison group to state firms for all of these findings is foreign owned firms. The internal labour practices of foreign firms are more consistent with a view of profit‐maximizing firms operating with no political constraints. This is not the case for Vietnamese de novo private firms that exhibit much more idiosyncratic behaviour and whose labour practices are often indistinguishable from state firms. The exact reasons for this remain a topic of on‐going research yet we conjecture that various private sector constraints, including limited access to formal capital, play an important role.     

经济转型理论评析

经济转型之初 ,一些经济学家基于新古典经济学信条提出 ,可以通过“激进”措施将原来的计划体制一次性破除而重建一个全新的市场经济。但迅速私有化并没有带来企业治理结构的改善和原国有资产的有效重组。与此形成鲜明对照的是 ,中国的渐进改革却取得了成功 ,并得到了越来越广泛的认可。 2 0世纪 90年代中期以来 ,经济转型理论开始发生变化 ,“制度演进主义”的影响日渐扩大 ,经济学家开始强调市场经济支持性制度的重要性以及制度变革的长期性 ,认为分权、激励、竞争、良好的司法和会计制度等比私有化更重要 ,并在政治经济学层面上分析了不确定性、利益集团、政府、改革秩序与步骤对制度变迁的影响。     

DETERMINANTS OF A FIRM'S ISO 14001 CERTIFICATION: AN EMPIRICAL STUDY OF TAIWAN

Abstract.   Only rarely have empirical studies analysed the responses of Taiwanese manufacturing firms to ISO 14001, despite firm responses to environmental issues being an important aspect of environmental management. This study empirically examines the determinants of firms' environmental self-governance. Export oriented Taiwanese firms, which face environmental concerns from foreign consumers, are found to be more likely than domestic focused firms to adopt ISO 14001. This study also finds that several firm attributes are decisive for firm adoption of ISO 14001. However, this study does not find any significant impact of local governors' political party affiliation on firms' ISO 14001 certifications.     

Socially responsible firms and endogenous choice of strategic incentives

In this paper we are analyzing a mixed quantity-setting duopoly consisting of a socially concerned firm and a profit-maximizing firm. The socially concerned firm considers one group of stakeholders in its objective function and maximizes its profit plus a share of consumer surplus. Both firms have the option to hire a manager who determines the production quantity on behalf of the firm's owner. We find that in the subgame-perfect equilibrium of this game both firms hire a manager and delegate the production choice. If the unit production costs of the firms are similar, then the socially concerned firm has a higher market share and even higher profit. Interestingly, we observe that the relationship between the share of consumer surplus taken into account by the socially concerned firm and its profit is non-monotonic. As the share increases, the socially concerned firm's profit first increases and then decreases. The conclusion is that it pays off to take stakeholder interests into account, but not too much.     

政策性负担、道德风险与预算软约束

本文在一个动态博弈的框架下 ,考察了政策性负担与转轨经济中企业的预算软约束问题。在信息不对称情况下 ,政策性负担将导致国有企业经理的道德风险 ,从而导致国有企业的低效率 ;当市场竞争达到一定程度时 ,政策性负担必然带来国有企业的预算软约束。而且 ,预算软约束同企业的公有制性质无关 ,在同样承担政策性负担的条件下 ,私有企业比国有企业更容易产生预算软约束 ,并且要求政府提供更多的补贴。当国有企业承担政策性负担时 ,政府剥夺企业的生产自主权往往是一种次优的制度安排