Boards of Directors, Market Discipline and Firm Performance

Abstract:   The board of directors is generally seen as an important internal governance structure. However, the empirical evidence on the board‐performance relationship is not conclusive. On the other hand, a growing literature suggests that different control mechanisms, either internal or external to the firm, can interact with each other and affect performance. One such important factor is product market competition. The objective of the study is to investigate further the board‐performance relationship taking into consideration the potential effect of market competition. More precisely, the study analyzes the combined effect of boards of directors' characteristics, and market discipline on firm performance. Overall, the results suggest that competition has a positive and significant impact on firm profitability and productivity. Moreover, this determinant factor creates the conditions for which the board‐performance relationship is supported. In other words, for boards to be effective, firms should be exposed to a competitive environment.     

基于期权博弈的企业价值边界均衡演化分析

本文应用期权博弈理论,对企业在面对市场环境不确定和竞争者行为不确定情况下企业价值边界的动态均衡演化过程做了深入分析。结果表明,企业价值边界确定在企业等待的期权价值与抢先的战略价值相均衡之处。企业抢先行动或等待都会引起不确定因素的变化,从而引起上述两类价值曲线的位移或曲率变化,并使得企业价值边界表现出动态均衡变化。而不同的不确定状况又决定了企业不同的策略行动,即是变得强硬而抢先,还是变得温和而等待,从而企业可以通过相机抉择保持可持续竞争优势,实现企业价值最大化。     

权力视角下的企业契约分解与变迁

本文以权力为逻辑起点,分析了企业契约中控制权的来源及其在不同企业成员之间的配置,本文认为企业控制权倾向于配置给企业成员中有权力的一方,企业契约的签订是双方权力结构的形式化过程。根据契约剩余和控制权配置的不同,可以将企业契约分解为市场契约、科层制契约和关系契约三种不同性质的契约,这一结论在理论上解释了企业契约与市场契约的不同。企业契约的剩余给契约调整提供了空间,在持续交易的过程中权力结构的变化则为契约调整和变迁提供了原动力。但是企业契约变迁具有路径依赖的性质,并且企业制度并不是效率演进的。     

Firm,strategic group,and industry influences on performance

A long‐standing debate has focused on the extent to which different levels of analysis shape firm performance. The strategic group level has been largely excluded from this inquiry, despite evidence that group membership matters. In this study, we use hierarchical linear modeling to simultaneously estimate firm‐, strategic group‐, and industry‐level influences on short‐term and long‐term measures of performance. We assess the three levels' explanatory power using a sample of 1,165 firms in 12 industries with data from a 7‐year period. To enhance comparability to previous research, we also estimate the effects using the variance components and ANOVA methods relied on in past studies. To assess the robustness of strategic group effects, we examine both deductively and inductively defined groups. We found that all three levels are significantly associated with performance. The firm effect is the strongest, while the strategic group effect rivals and for some measures outweighs the industry effect. We also found that the levels have varying effects in relation to different performance measures, suggesting more complex relationships than depicted in previous studies. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

商业银行中间业务的合作与竞争研究

近年来,大力发展中间业务成为国内商业银行的共识.合作与竞争应该是商业银行中间业务共同发展、谋求内外部效率最优的发展模式.国内商业银行需要从排他性竞争走向合作竞争,建立全新的合作竞争的共赢关系.本文引入合作竞争的理论,运用厂商理论、资源依赖性观点、博弈论和交易成本学的观点来分析国内商业银行在中间业务上竞争合作的动因,提出通过竞争合作促进国内商业银行中间业务发展的具体策略,并对在构建共赢关系过程中应注意的问题进行了深入探讨,就WTO后国内银行如何实施更为有效的中间业务发展战略提出了方案建议.     

基于复杂性科学观的高科技企业成长机制研究

复杂性科学打破了新古典经济学的简单性、稳定性和线性的均衡范式,开创了一种建立在复杂性、动态性和非线性基础上的演化范式。高科技企业的成长由于具有非线性、动态性和自组织等复杂系统的基本特征,更适合于纳入到复杂性科学的新范式中来研究。从高科技企业成长机制的复杂性特征入手,分析了其成长机理,构建了高科技企业适应性成长机制模型。     

Technology and the Size Distribution of Firms: Evidence from Dutch Manufacturing

Empirical studies have shown that the size distribution of firms can be described as a Pareto distribution. However, these studies have focused on large firms and aggregate statistics. Little attention has been placed on the role of technology in shaping firm size distributions. Using a comprehensive dataset of manufacturing firms and the Community Innovation Survey from the Netherlands, the paper investigates the relationship between firm size and technology. It shows that technological factors shape the distribution of firm size, suggesting that the Pareto law is not an invariant property and that technology can constrain the “self-organising” character of industrial economies.     

长江流域板块结构分异的制度成因与区域空间结构的重组

本文认为长江流域区域板块结构的形成与分异是各地区不同程度的市场化进程对区域空间结构产生非对称影响的结果。并论证了制度的创新与协调将有助于区域板块常规动力的耦合与外生动力的内在化。为促使长江流域区域的板块融合，应结合不同层次城市区域的空间结构特征和重组驱动力．制定与技术变革和全球化现实背景相适应的、以产业空间与城市空间相协同为目标、以区域治理体制为保障的空间结构政策。     

Endogenous schooling and the distribution of the gender wage gap

Previous studies on the gender wage gap have relied on OLS when estimating the wage equations. However, a number of recent studies, devoted to estimating the return to education, have shown that OLS may produce biased estimates for a number of reasons. As a consequence, previous results regarding the gender wage gap may also be biased. In this paper, we first estimate wage equations using a GMM procedure applied to panel data and then investigate the distribution of the gender wage gap. The results indicate that OLS may seriously overestimate the unexplained gender wage gap.First version received: October 2001/Final version accepted: July 2003     

A demand‐based perspective on sustainable competitive advantage

We develop an approach to analyzing the sustainability of competitive advantage that emphasizes demand‐side factors. We extend the added‐value approach to business strategy by introducing an explicit treatment of how firms create value for consumers. This allows us to characterize how consumer heterogeneity and marginal utility from performance improvements on the demand side interact with resource heterogeneity and improving technologies on the supply side. Using this approach, we address a variety of questions including whether technology substitutions will be permanent or transitory; the sequence in which new technologies attack different market segments; how rents from different types of resources change over time; whether decreasing marginal utility and imitation give rise to similar rent profiles; the extent of synergies within a firm's resource portfolio; the emergence of new generic strategies; and the conditions that support strategic diversity in a market. Our focus on consumer utility and value creation complements the traditional focus in the strategy literature on competition and value capture. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.