人机共驾事故侵权责任与保险制度的法经济分析

作为人工智能落地的重点领域，自动驾驶技术未来将大幅减少交通事故，降低保险赔付。但自动驾驶汽车难以快速跨越人机共驾阶段，实现完全无人驾驶。机动车事故侵权损害赔偿与保险赔付具有显著协同效应，人机共驾汽车事故的侵权责任分配影响着未来交通事故的保险应对，而互动良好的事故保险可以强化侵权法效力，降低人机共驾汽车事故侵权责任不确定性。法经济分析具有独特的责任和风险视角，把人机共驾汽车事故成本细化为直接成本、风险分散成本和风险管理成本，为实现驾驶人、生产人和保险人之间的利益均衡提供工具借鉴。针对人机共驾汽车事故，应该以事故成本为目标调整归责原则、以过错为界限定位侵权法与交强险的功能，并利用无过错保险调整交强险。     

Director and officer liability and corporate tax avoidance

We use the unique nature of the director and officer liability protection law applicable to Nevada incorporated firms to study how liability protection is related to corporate tax avoidance. We find that firms incorporated in Nevada avoid 32% more federal corporate tax as a fraction of total assets than firms incorporated in Delaware, and 40% more than firms incorporated in other states. Nevada-incorporated firms have a 15% lower cash effective tax rate and an 8% lower GAAP ETR. The results are robust to various specifications including instrumental variable and matching approaches. Greater tax avoidance is also associated with lower payouts to shareholders for Nevada-incorporated firms. The findings are consistent with theories about the complementarity of managerial diversion and tax avoidance for firms with poor monitoring, and they demonstrate how increases in liability protection lead to the unintended consequence of greater firm tax avoidance.     

The impact of D&O insurance on excess corporate leverage

The governance effects of directors’ and officers’ liability insurance (D&O insurance), an important tool for risk diversification, are of strong concern in the capital market. Using a sample of Chinese A-share listed firms from 2009 to 2018, we examine the impact of D&O insurance on excess corporate leverage. We find that D&O insurance is negatively associated with excess corporate leverage and that this result is consistent with a series of robustness tests. Further analyses show that D&O insurance impedes excess corporate leverage mainly because of its effect on external monitoring. The effect is more pronounced for firms that are state-owned, have political connections and are located in provinces with low marketization than for other firms.     

Repayment performance of joint-liability microcredits: Metropolitan evidence on social capital and group names

This study empirically tests the predictions of four primary theories applicable to joint-liability microcredit programs’ repayment performance using an administrative data in a metropolitan setting. We introduce a new variable, group names, as a proxy for social capital to capture cooperation, solidarity, and drive for success, which shows a significant positive impact of 9.9% on repayment performance. Precise calculations of residential distance between group members show a deterioration of repayment performance by 1.1% with a 15-min increase in minimum walking distance. The results also show that joint liability, sectoral diversification, type of sector that the borrowers facilitate, the ratio of new members in a group, characteristics of loan officers, loan amount, interest rate, income-loan amount coverage ratio, the existence of senior members, average education, and diversity in income streams significantly affect repayment performance.     

论劳动基准法中用人单位的惩罚性赔偿责任

劳动基准具有公私法交融的社会法品格,其义务主体为用人单位,其权利主体则有国家和劳动者。当用人单位违反劳动基准义务,不仅应承担对国家的公法中的责任,还应承担对劳动者的私法中的责任。为追求实质公平、建立正确的利益导向机制以及构建与劳动基准法相匹配的责任制度,有必要在劳动基准法中引入惩罚性赔偿制度