Career concerns and firm – sponsored general training

This article studies the provision of firm-sponsored general training in the presence of workers' career concerns. The model builds on the argument that the provision of general training reduces the employer's monopsony power. In this context, it is shown that the worker's implicit incentives to provide effort increase with the level of acquired general skills. The employer takes this reciprocal effect into account and becomes more willing to invest in general human capital. When the positive effect of training on worker's effort incentives is strong enough, the equilibrium outcome may involve overinvestment relative to the first-best. It is also shown that a sharper increase in worker's power associated with additional training may either strengthen or weaken the employer's investment incentives and can have either beneficial or detrimental effects on welfare.     

Buyer power and quality improvements

This paper analyses the sources of buyer power and the effect of buyer power on sellers’ investment in quality improvements. In our model, retailers make take-it-or-leave-it offers to a producer and each of them in equilibrium obtains its marginal contribution to total profits (gross of sunk costs). In turn, the individual marginal contribution depends on the rivalry between retailers in the bargaining process. Rivalry increases when retailers are less differentiated and when decreasing returns to scale in production are larger. The allocation of total surplus affects the incentives of the producer to invest in product quality, an instance of the hold-up problem. An increase in buyer power not only makes the supplier and consumers worse off, but it may even harm retailers that obtain a larger share of a smaller surplus.     

基于公平心理偏好的投资博弈——敲竹杠问题的一个行为解决

敲竹杠问题是不完全合约理论的中心话题,经典文献认为,如果合约是不完全的,当事人的专用性投资会引发敲竹杠风险从而导致无效率的专用性投资。但是,关于敲竹杠问题的文献通常假定事后谈判结果对事前投资成本不敏感。通过在雇佣双方的投资博弈中引入投资成本相关性这种合作的谈判方式,将传统敲竹杠模型中影响谈判力的因素与当事人对公平偏好的行为因素二者融合,本文证明:与传统的投资博弈相比,在投资成本影响企业(雇员)谈判力的情况下,双方有更强的专用性人力资本投资激励。雇佣双方所面临的敲竹杠风险取决于双方的初始谈判力,且双方有可能在事前做出社会最优甚至过度的投资。这也从一个方面解释了现实中大量存在的有效投资现象。     

Natural groups and economic characteristics as driving forces of wage discrimination

We investigate whether the origin of an employee provides different motives for wage discrimination in gift-exchange experiments with students and migrant workers in China. In a lab and an internet experiment, subjects in the role of employers can condition their wages on the employees׳ home provinces. The resulting systematic differences in wages can be linked to natural groups and economic characteristics of the provinces. In-group favoritism increases wages for employees who share the same origin as the employer, while an increased probability of being matched with an employee with a different ethnicity reduces wages. Furthermore, wages in the laboratory increase with the actual wage level in the employees׳ home province. Nevertheless, employees׳ effort is not influenced by these variables; only the wage paid in the experiment influences effort.     

Job matching when employment contracts suffer from moral hazard

We consider a job matching model where the relationships between firms and wealth-constrained workers suffer from moral hazard. Specifically, effort on the job is non-contractible so that parties that are matched negotiate a bonus contract. Higher unemployment benefits affect the workers' outside option. The latter is improved for low-skilled workers. Hence they receive a larger share of the surplus, which strengthens their effort incentives and increases productivity. Effects are reversed for high-skilled workers. Moreover, raising benefit payments affects the proportion of successful matches, which induces some firms to exit the economy and causes unemployment to increase.     

员工股权激励对中小企业创新会产生补充的促进效应吗？

高管与核心技术员工作用于创新的不同过程,同时也是股权激励计划的主要激励对象,两者股权激励的互动效应对创新的影响值得探讨。选取2009—2015年成功实施股权激励的深A上市中小板与创业板公司为研究对象,考察员工股权激励对高管股权激励在中小企业创新中的影响及其作用机制。研究结果表明：实施股权激励计划能够显著增加企业研发投入与创新产出;相较于高管,核心技术员工股权激励强度越大,企业创新数量越多、质量越高;高管股权激励降低了创新转化效率。进一步地,融资支持效应和人才激励效应是员工股权激励补充促进创新的重要机制;代理成本在高管股权激励与研发投入关系中起遮掩作用。     

Intangible Investment and Market Valuation

This study derives performance‐ and expenditure‐based estimates of intangible capital and measures the extent to which intangible capital is captured by the equity market measures of firm value. Intangible capital is evaluated using occupational information available in the Finnish linked employer–employee data for the 1997–2011 period. The performance‐based organizational investment in value added is approximately 3 percent; R&D and ICT investment shares are lower, at 1.5 percent, and all are clustered in intangible‐intensive sectors that represent 40 percent of the private sector. Expenditure‐based organizational capital also exists in clusters other than that intensively investing in managerial and marketing effort, and performance‐based R&D capital is concentrated in the cluster with intensive R&D activity; both increase the market value of firms beyond the level that can be explained by standard economic analysis.     

Fair wages survive multiple sources of income inequality

When an employee in a gift exchange game earns significantly less than the employer, the source of employer income does not affect effort choices. However, to induce one unit of effort, the employer has to pay higher wages than in a game without payoff inequality.     

Endogenous residual claimancy by vertical hierarchies

In this note we study a model of vertical hierarchies where the allocation of residual claimancy is endogenous and is determined jointly with production and contractual decisions. We show that the (equilibrium) allocation of residual claimancy may be affected by production externalities across hierarchies in a non-trivial manner. Specifically, although revenue-sharing contracts foster agents’ (non-contractible) surplus enhancing effort, we show that principals dealing with exclusive and privately informed agents might still prefer to retain a share of the surplus from production when dealing with inefficient (high-cost) types. This is because reducing the surplus share of those types reduces the information rent given up to efficient (low-cost) types by means of a ‘generalized competing contracts’ effect.     

Corporate Social Responsibility in the work place

We analyze the effect of investments in corporate social responsibility (CSR) on workers’ motivation. In our experiment, a gift exchange game variant, CSR is captured by donating a certain share of a firm’s profit to charity. We are testing for CSR effects by varying the possible share of profits given to charity. Additionally, we investigate the effect of matching mission preferences, i.e., a worker preferring the same charity the firm donates to. Our results show that, on average, workers reciprocate investments in CSR with increased effort. Matching mission preferences also result in higher effort, independently of the extent of the CSR investment.     

Performance-related pay and gender wage differences

We study the impact of performance-related pay (PRP) on gender wage differences using Finnish-linked employer–employee panel data. Controlling for unobserved person and firm effects, we find that bonuses increase women’s earnings slightly less than men’s, but the economic significance of the difference is negligible. Piece rates and reward rates, however, tend to increase gender wage differentials. Thus, the nature of a PRP plan is important for gauging the impact of PRP on gender wage differentials. A comparison with OLS results shows the importance of controlling for an unobserved person and firm effects.     

多关系条件下多代理人行为分析与激励机制设计

针对多个代理人之间存在多种关系———竞争、合作和中立的情况,建立了信息对称和信息非对称条件下的多代理人行为选择模型,通过模型求解与模拟计算分析多关系条件下多代理人的行为选择和委托人的最优选择或激励机制。结果表明:信息对称条件下,员工薪酬与员工间的竞争程度无关,但合作关系更能激励员工努力工作;信息非对称条件下,员工间关系影响其薪酬和企业利润,合作关系下的企业总收益比其他关系下的企业收益高,员工间的合作关系会影响并提高处于其他关系下员工的努力程度。最后提出:企业面对多员工管理问题时应尽量构建合作的工作环境,以减小员工工作努力程度的不确定性、实现利益最大化。     

INFORMATIONAL CASCADES ELICIT PRIVATE INFORMATION*

We introduce cheap talk in a dynamic investment model with information externalities. We first show how social learning adversely affects the credibility of cheap talk messages. Next, we show how an informational cascade makes truth‐telling incentive compatible. A separating equilibrium only exists for high‐surplus projects. Both an investment subsidy and an investment tax can increase welfare. The more precise the sender's information, the higher her incentives to truthfully reveal her private information.     

基于收益共享和成本共担的供应链双向激励协调

在供应商和销售商组成的二级供应链中,供应商隐藏关于生产成本的私人信息,销售商隐藏关于销售努力的行动,且双方地位相当,此时协调主体不明确。为了解决该问题,文章引入虚拟第三方为利他的委托人,站在供应链整体利润最大化的角度,设计基于收益共享和成本共担的协调契约,对供应商和销售商实施双向激励。研究结果表明:当收益共享比例和成本共担比例满足一定条件时,供应链实现了协调。此时,该契约调动了供应商降低生产成本、销售商提高努力水平的积极性,合作双方达到了"双赢"。笔者通过数值实验对结果进行了验证,表明了结果的有效性。     

Competition and investment in telecommunications

This study examines the relationship between competition and investment by Incumbert Local Exchange Carriers (ILECs) in US telecommunications markets. A panel data model and a dynamic panel data model that have not been used in previous studies are applied in this analysis. Results of the panel data model suggest that investment by ILECs is positively related to the market share of Competitive Local Exchange Carriers (CLECs), and negatively to the absolute number of CLECs. However, once the persistence in ILECs’ investment behaviour is controlled for using the dynamic model, our measures of the existing competition from CLECs, at best, have a weak effect on ILECs’ investment. Therefore, while strengthening competition in the telecom sector may be key to restoring telecom investment, it is uncertain that competition spurred by the mandatory sharing policy in this sector stimulates ILECs’ incentives to invest in new infrastructure.     

Concern for Fairness and Incentives in Water Negotiations

This paper focuses on transboundary water resources and investigates the presence of incentives to cooperate in investment projects for improving water availability. Investments over transboundary water cannot be always protected by suitable contractual arrangements because countries’ actions cannot be monitored and enforced by a third party. In such a case, the traditional literature predicts that cooperation rarely emerges due to the risk of ex-post opportunistic behaviours by the parties. This prediction does not provide a satisfactory representation of many real-world situations in which riparian countries have demonstrated a remarkable ability to cooperate over their shared water resources. This paper shows that it is possible to reconcile the empirical evidence with the theoretical approach if one assumes that countries display some concern for ‘fairness’ when negotiating, which depends on their initial level of investment. Within the proposed framework, the incentives to cooperate turn out to be higher than traditional literature predicts because, by engaging in the investment project, countries do not only increase the amount of water effectively available, but also—through their concern for fairness—the share of water obtainable at the bargaining table.     

The gift of being chosen

We report evidence from an experiment where an employer selects one of two workers to perform a task for a fixed compensation. Workers differ in their ability. The employer’s payoff depends on the worker’s ability and on a non-contractible effort that the worker exerts once employed. We find that selected workers exert an effort higher than the minimum enforceable one. When the employers can send a free-text form message to the selected worker, workers with low ability exert significantly higher effort than the workers with high ability. The difference in effort overcompensates the difference in ability.     

Tax policy, venture capital, and entrepreneurship

The paper studies the effects of tax policy on venture capital activity. Entrepreneurs pursue a single high risk project each but have no own resources. Financiers provide funds, covering investment cost plus an upfront payment, in exchange for a share in the firm. The contract must include incentives to enlist full effort of entrepreneurs. Venture capitalists also assist with valuable business advice to enhance survival chances. The paper develops a general equilibrium framework with a traditional and an entrepreneurial sector and investigates the effects of taxes on the equilibrium level of managerial advice, entrepreneurship and welfare. It considers differential wage and capital income taxes, a comprehensive income tax, progressive taxation as well as investment and output subsidies to the entrepreneurial sector.     

产融结合对制造企业研发投资具有双向调节作用吗

研发投资的高回报吸引着制造企业扩大投资规模，而研发投资的高风险又进一步强化了制造企业融资约束。产融结合是否既能够缓解融资约束调节制造业企业研发投资不足、又能约束投资惯性调节其投资过度呢？以2007—2016年沪深A股制造业上市公司为研究对象的实证研究发现，产融结合对制造企业研发投资具有缓解研发投资不足、加重研发投资过度的单向调节作用。进一步分析产融结合有效缓解研发投资不足、加重研发投资过度的机理，并对如何利用产融结合增强制造企业有效投资提出相关对策建议。〖JP〗