合作主义:中国福利制度框架的重构

合作主义 (corporatism)或称三方伙伴合作的程度在当代发达国家的经济制度和福利制度中是一个值得关注的问题。它与几乎所有工业化国家的社会保障制度相生相伴 ,相互依存 ,成为一枚硬币的两个侧面 ;它是现代文明国家发展进程中一个不可逾越的历史阶段 ,是现代社会保障制度与现代社会福利制度的结构中一种不可或缺的要素。在社会保障制度设计上我们应该有一个理性的预期 ,使之充分体现着我们价值观的追求 ,利用“后发国家”的优势和我国独特的政治优势 ,以避免当代西方福利国家中出现的问题 ;我国在进行经济制度的转型过程中不能忽略福利制度的转型 ,我国新工会法的颁布客观上为树立现代社会保障和社会福利制度法律框架的第一个支柱打下了桩基     

英国商人与1902年中英商约

在1902年中英商约谈判过程中,英国商人扮演了重要角色,对1902年中英商约的谈判和签订有重要影响,通过这个条约,英国商人获得了他们极想获得的一系列特权和利益。回顾1902年中英商约,对我国商人参与国际竞争有一定的借鉴意义。     

《日美贸易协定》对我国农产品贸易的影响及对策

本文在分析日美农产品关税、贸易和在《日美贸易协定》中降税情况的基础上,采用GTAP模型定量分析《协定》实施对我国农产品贸易的影响。结果显示:《协定》的实施将对我国农业总体发展产生一定冲击,日美相互减免农产品关税将带来一定程度的贸易转移效应,尤其对我国出口日本的蔬果和畜产品影响尤为明显。结合我国自贸区谈判和农业发展情况,本文提出积极推动多双边农业谈判、培育出口竞争优势、借鉴日本经验灵活处理农产品降税、利用自贸试验区积极对接农业国际规则等政策建议。     

Trade mechanism selection in markets with frictions

We endogenize the trade mechanism in a search economy with many homogeneous sellers and many heterogeneous buyers of unobservable type. We study how heterogeneity and the traders' continuation values—which are endogenous—influence the sellers' choice of trade mechanism. Sellers trade off the probability of an immediate sale against the surplus expected from it, choosing whether to trade with everyone and how quickly. In equilibrium sellers may simply target one buyer type via non-negotiable offers (price posting), or may price discriminate (haggling). We also study when haggling generates trading delays. A price setting externality arises because of a strategic complementarity in the sellers' pricing choices.     

The Morality of Bluffing: A Reply to Allhoff

In a recent paper that appeared in this journal Fritz Allhoff addresses the morality of bluffing in negotiations¹. He focuses on cases in which people misstate their reservation price in negotiations, e.g., suppose that I am selling a house and tell a prospective buyer that $300,000 is absolutely the lowest price that I will accept, when I know that I would be willing to accept as little as $270,000 for the house rather than continue to try to sell it. Allhoff criticizes my (qualified) defense of bluffing in my paper Second Thoughts on Bluffing,² and offers what he takes to be a more plausible defense of bluffing. Allhoffs criticisms rest on several serious misinterpretations of my views. He ascribes to me several arguments that I dont make. He also attributes to me an unqualified defense of bluffing that I explicitly reject. I briefly document this in Section 1. In Sections 2 and 3 I explain and criticize Allhoffs positive views about bluffing and the morality of bluffing.Thomas Carson is professor of philosophy at Loyola University Chicago. He is the author of Value and the Good Life and The Status of Morality. He is the co-editor of Moral Relativism and Morality and the Good Life. He is the author of numerous papers on ethical theory and business ethics and is a member of the editorial board of Business Ethics Quarterly and Journal of Business Ethics. He is currently working on a book entitled Lying and Deception: Theory and Practice.     

The Impact of Creativity Training on an Accounting Negotiation

There is renewed interest in the factors that affect negotiations, as they are a significant part of organizational life. While we understand that there are many barriers to effectively reaching optimal solutions in a negotiation, we are still unclear as to the means by which to meet this goal. In this paper, we offer creativity training as a possible antecedent to effective negotiation. Our results show that individuals trained to think creatively reached more integrative solutions or solutions that were mutually beneficial to all negotiation participants than individuals who did not receive creativity training. We discuss implications and future research.     

Negotiation games with unobservable mixed disagreement actions

A negotiation model combines an alternating offers bargaining game with a normal form stage game that determines players’ (interim) disagreement payoffs. Busch and Wen [Econometrica 63 (1995) 545] investigated this negotiation model under the assumption that players’ past mixed disagreement actions are observable. The question arises if this assumption is a substantial restriction. In this paper, we adopt the more plausible assumption that only the realizations of past mixed actions are observable, and find that the set of equilibrium payoffs shrinks, compared to that when mixed disagreement actions are observable. We precisely identify the effects of the unobservability and characterize the limiting set of equilibrium payoffs as the two players become sufficiently patient.     

Trade interdependence, the international financial institutions, and the recent evolution of sovereign-debt renegotiations

This paper analyzes the effect of a debtor country’s pattern of trade with commercial creditors’ home countries on the outcome of debt-rescheduling negotiations. The analysis reveals that a debtor country with more market power has greater leverage in a three-way debt-rescheduling negotiation that includes the debtor country, its creditors and the International Financial Institutions (IFIs). The paper also considers the effects of the IFI sovereign-debt policy on the bargaining power of the parties in debt-rescheduling negotiations. Two bargaining frameworks analyzed and compared in the paper represent the negotiation mechanism at different stages of the IFI sovereign-debt policy evolution.     

Endogenous Minimum Participation in International Environmental Treaties

Many international treaties come into force only after a minimum number of countries have signed and ratified the treaty. Minimum participation constraints are particularly frequent in the case of environmental treaties dealing with global commons, where free-riding incentives are strong. Why do countries that know they have an incentive to free-ride accept to “tie their hands” through the introduction of a minimum participation constraint? This article addresses the above issues by modeling the formation of an international treaty as a three-stage non-cooperative coalition formation game. Both the equilibrium minimum participation constraint and the number of signatories—the coalition size—are determined. This article, by showing that a non-trivial partial coalition, sustained by a binding minimum participation constraint, forms at the equilibrium, explains the occurrence of minimum participation clauses in most international environmental agreements. It also analyses the endogenous equilibrium size of the minimum participation constraint.     

Arbitration systems and negotiations

We consider a model of bargaining by concessions where agents can terminate negotiations by accepting the settlement of an arbitrator. The impact of pragmatic arbitrators—that enforce concessions that precede their appointment—is compared with that of arbitrators that act on principle—ignoring prior concessions. We show that while the impact of arbitration always depends on how costly that intervention is relative to direct negotiation, the range of scenarios for which it has an impact, and the precise effect of such impact, does change depending on the behavior—pragmatic or on principle—of the arbitrator. Moreover the requirement of mutual consent to appoint the arbitrator matters only when he is pragmatic. Efficiency and equilibrium are not aligned since agents sometimes reach negotiated agreements when an arbitrated settlement is more efficient and vice versa. What system of arbitration has the best performance depends on the arbitration and negotiation costs, and each can be optimal for plausible environments.