《劳动合同法》实施对我国企业人力资源管理的影响——基于人力资源经理的观点

《劳动合同法》对企业人力资源管理产生了重要影响。本文通过对全国近600家企业人力资源经理的调查,考察了《劳动合同法》实施前后企业在劳动合同签订率和合同期限、招聘、用人成本、解雇和经济补偿、用工灵活性等方面的变化情况。研究结果表明,《劳动合同法》明显提高了劳动合同签订率,延长了劳动合同期限,增加了无固定期限合同数量;促使招聘和解雇决策更谨慎;在一定程度上提高了用人成本,限制了用工灵活性。这些影响因企业规模、所有制不同而存在差异。     

BOT projects: Incentives and efficiency

In recent years, governments have been increasingly adopting Build-Operate-Transfer (BOT) contracts for large infrastructure projects. However, BOT contracts have received little attention from economists. The apparent agency problem in BOT projects has never been analyzed. In this paper, we develop a model to examine the incentives, efficiency and regulation in BOT contracts. We show that a BOT contract with a price regulation during the concession period and a license extension after the concession period is capable of achieving full efficiency. Both license extension and price control are observed in many real-world BOT projects. We also investigate the efficiency in such contracts by considering other factors, including time consistency, price ceiling, foreign ownership, and the lack of price regulation.     

Ownership and Cost‐Sharing Contracts

We discuss the relative merits of public and private ownership in an incomplete contract framework developed by Hart, Shleifer and Vishney (HSV). We add two new elements to their model. First, the government may offer cost‐sharing contracts when procuring the good. Second, the owner of a private firm may divert resources that increase their own profit/utility but increase total costs. The cost sharing contract allows the government to reduce the private firm's incentives to dump quality in order to save on costs. However, this also leads to resource diversion, which increases total costs. We derive the preferred mode of ownership when the government optimally chooses the power of the cost sharing scheme. We find that the presence of quality‐reducing cost reductions only favours government ownership if the scope for resource diversion is substantial. A discussion of when resource diversion is likely to be important is also provided.     

Double Moral Hazard,Monitoring, and the Nature of Contracts

generalized double-sided moral-hazard model, with risk-averse parties who mutually monitor each other (to get a reasonable idea of outcome/effort). The model considers trade-off between monitoring costs and moral hazard costs, which are endogenously determined by the extent of monitoring. Using this model, we formally prove a generalized version of Coase's conjecture – that the optimal contract minimizes the agency and risk costs. We then show how varying assumptions about the feasibility or cost of monitoring of the outcome or the worker's effort lead to different contracts being optimal. The analysis is then used to explain the nature of contracts observed in practice under many different situations. We will give an explanation as to why industrial workers typically work under wage contracts, while share contracts are common in agriculture and will explain why profit sharing is more common for senior managers than for the production workers. Received September 19, 2000; revised version received October 30, 1997     

The Law and Economics of Costly Contracting

In most of the contract theory literature, contracting costsare assumed either to be high enough to preclude certain formsof contracting or low enough to permit any contract to be written.Similarly researchers usually treat renegotiation as eithercostless or prohibitively costly. This article addresses themiddle ground between these extremes, in which the costs ofcontracting and renegotiation can take intermediate values andthe contracting parties can themselves influence these costs.The context for our analysis is the canonical problem of inducingefficient relation-specific investment and efficient ex posttrade. Among our principle results are: (i) The efficiency andcomplexity of the initial contract are decreasing in the costto create a contract. Hence the best mechanism design contractscan be too costly to write. (ii) When parties use the simplercontract forms, they require renegotiation to capture ex postsurplus and to create efficient investment incentives. In somecases, parties want low renegotiation costs. More interestingis that, in other cases, parties have a strict preference formoderate renegotiation costs. (iii) The effect of contract lawon contract form is significant but has been overlooked. Inparticular, the law's interpretive rules raise the cost of enforcingcomplex contracts, and thus induce parties to use simple contracts.Worse, the law also lowers renegotiation costs, which furtherundermines complex contracts and is also inappropriate for someof the simpler contracts.     

Codes of Best Practice in competitive markets for managers

We study the corporate governance of firms in environments where possibly heterogeneous shareholders compete for possibly heterogeneous managers. A firm, formed by a shareholder and a manager, can sign either an incentive contract or a contract including a Code of Best Practice. A Code allows for better management control, but makes it hard for managers to react quickly when market conditions change. Codes tend to be adopted in markets with low volatility and in environments where managers obtain low levels of benefits. The firms with the best projects tend to adopt a Code when managers are not too heterogeneous, while the best managers tend to be hired through incentive contracts when the projects are similar. Although the matching between shareholders and managers is often positively assortative, shareholders with the best projects might be willing to renounce hiring the best managers; instead, signing contracts including Codes with lower-ability managers.     

Renegotiation-proof contracting, disclosure, and incentives for efficient investment

Disclosure by firms would seem to reduce investment inefficiency by reducing informational asymmetry. However, the impact of disclosure is endogenous and depends on incentives within the firm. Given optimal renegotiation-proof contracts, disclosing only accepted contracts does not solve the Myers-Majluf problem. What solves the problem is having either full transparency of all compensation negotiations or, more reasonably, additional forward-looking announcements. The model is robust to renegotiation in equilibrium, the order of moves, and moral hazard. The analysis illuminates disclosure regulation: forward-looking disclosure is beneficial when the manager's contract is optimal and induces truth-telling.     

AUCTIONS,EX POST COMPETITION AND PRICES: THE EFFICIENCY OF PUBLIC‐PRIVATE PARTNERSHIPS*

ABSTRACT ** : Using an original database concerning 1102 French local public authorities in 2001, we explore the relationships between prices charged by private operators in water contracts and ex post competition. We show that prices charged in contracts in which operators are in a monopoly situation throughout the duration of the contract, are not affected by a ‘competition effect’ between private operators. However, a competition effect between private operators and public management appears to be crucial in explaining prices combined with a ‘termination effect’, reflecting the fact that the contract is close to being renewed, and hence re‐auctioned.     

Contract length heterogeneity and the persistence of monetary shocks in a dynamic generalized Taylor economy

We develop the generalized Taylor economy (GTE) in which there are many sectors with overlapping contracts of different lengths. In economies with the same average contract length, monetary shocks will be more persistent when longer contracts are present. Using the Bils–Klenow distribution of contract lengths, we find that the corresponding GTE tracks the U.S. data well. When we choose a GTE with the same distribution of completed contract lengths as the Calvo, the economies behave in a similar manner.     

Foreign Direct Investment and Contract Enforcement

A long-standing deterrent to foreign direct investment in developing countries is weak enforcement of binding contracts. A local firm may learn business skills from a cooperating multinational firm and subsequently do business on its own based on the acquired skills. In a two-period, double-moral-hazard model, non-binding contracts are shown to be preferred by all parties, implying that contract enforcement is unnecessary. Our results shed light on the puzzling phenomenon that substantial FDI has been carried out under contractual arrangements in developing countries in which contract enforcement is problematic. They can also explain some interesting stylized facts on contractual joint ventures between multinationals and local firms in the early stage of an economic transition.J. Comp. Econom.,December 1998, 26(4), pp. 761–782. School of Business, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong; and Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Clear Water Bay, Hong Kong.     

Asymmetric contracts,cash flows and risk taking of mutual funds

Fund managers in delegated portfolio management face asymmetries in their compensation contracts and in the fund flows contingent on their funds' performance relative to a benchmark. In this study we investigate the impacts of contract asymmetry and fund flow asymmetry on the risk-taking behavior of open-end funds whose delegation contracts are performance based, and show that their impacts are opposite. When the two asymmetries apply simultaneously, the impact of one on the fund's risk-taking alleviates the impact of the other. Raising the return-sharing ratio cannot make the manager take more risk, but increasing the cash flow volume can. We also show that the tracking-error variance can measure the degree of risk that the fund takes.     

Wage Bargaining,Privatisation, Ability to Pay and Outside Options: Evidence from Hungary

This article examines the determinants of short-term wage dynamics, using a sample of large Hungarian companies for 1996–99. We test the basic implications of an efficient contract model of bargaining between incumbent employees and managers, which the data do not reject. In particular, there are structural differences between the ownership sectors consistent with our prior knowledge on relative bargaining strength and unionisation measures. Stronger bargaining position of workers leads to higher ability to pay elasticity of wages, and lower outside option elasticity. Our results indicate that while bargaining position of workers in domestic privatised firms may be weaker than in the state sector, the more robust difference relates to state sector workers versus privatised firms with majority foreign ownership.     

Asymmetric information and contract design for payments for environmental services

In contractual relationships involving payments for environmental services, conservation buyers know less than landowners know about the costs of contractual compliance. Landowners in such circumstances use their private information as a source of market power to extract informational rents from conservation agents. Reducing informational rents is an important task for buyers of environmental services who wish to maximize the services obtained from their limited budgets. Reducing informational rents also mitigates concerns about the “additionality” of PES contracts because low-cost landowners are least likely to provide different levels of services in the absence of a contract. Paying low-cost landowners less thus makes resources available for contracts with higher opportunity cost landowners, who are more likely to provide substantially different levels of services in the absence of a contract. To reduce informational rents to landowners, conservation agents can take three approaches: (1) acquire information on observable landowner attributes that are correlated with compliance costs; (2) offer landowners a menu of screening contracts; and (3) allocate contracts through procurement auctions. Each approach differs in terms of its institutional, informational and technical complexity, as well as in its ability to reduce informational rents without distorting the level of environmental services provided. No single approach dominates in all environments. Current theory and empirical work provides practitioners with insights into the relative merits of each approach. However, more theoretical work and experimentation in the laboratory and the field are necessary before definitive conclusions about the superiority of one or more of these approaches can be drawn.     

Monetary Integration and Economic Reform

Recent research in contract theory views ownership as a substitute for complete contracts. Here, this approach is applied to monetary integration. Countries face a coordination problem conducting monetary policy. Negative spillovers ensure uncoordinated policy generates too high inflation. Ex ante , policy makers can undertake politically costly economic reform. This has a positive spillover because it improves the outcome of the monetary policy game. Ex-post contracting over policy may be possible, but it supposed that ex-ante contracting over reform and monetary policy is not. This paper analyses when monetary union is a good substitute for this inability to commit.     

Moral Hazard and Adverse Selection in Procurement Contracting

A model of procurement contracting is developed and tested in laboratory experiments. Market performance results are presented for both fixed-price and cost-sharing contracts. Contracts are awarded with first-price sealed-bid or second-price sealed-bid auctions. The environment contains post-auction cost uncertainty and opportunity for unmonitored effort in contract cost reduction. Cost-sharing contracts are found to reduce procurement expense but also to be inefficient because of their induced moral hazard waste and cost overruns.Journal of Economic LiteratureClassification Numbers: C72, C92, D44, D61, D82, H57, L14.     

混合所有制、股权激励与融资决策中的防御行为--基于动态权衡理论的证据

文章基于动态权衡理论,以1999-2014年上市公司为样本,运用混合所有制改革这一“自然实验”条件,研究了高管股权激励对其融资决策中防御行为的影响,分离出激励和治理双重效应。研究发现：(1)股权激励有助于抑制高管融资决策中的防御行为,但这种效应只存在于民营企业中;(2)对于国有企业,只在股权分置改革后才观察到类似效果,而股改前高管在减少债务融资的同时,提高了股权激励水平,自我激励问题明显;(3)公司股权混合度越高,其在赋予高管股权激励上越谨慎,但在国有股比例较高的公司中,混合所有制改革显著提高了股权激励水平;(4)股权混合安排显著改进了股权激励契约在抑制高管防御行为方面的效率,这种效应在非国有股比例较高的公司中更强。     

Two Remarks on the Property-Rights Literature

We first point out that the recent property-rights literature is based on three assumptions: (1) that contracts are always subject to renegotiation; (2) that the exercise of a property right confers a private benefit and (3) that parties are risk-neutral. Building on Hart–Moore (1999), we provide conditions under which an optimal contract consists of nothing more than an assignment of property rights.
We also examine the robustness of some of the literature's standard predictions about asset ownership to the introduction of mechanisms for eliciting parties' ex post willingness to pay for the assets (such as options or financial markets). To illustrate the issue, we revisit the Hart–Moore (1990) proposition that joint ownership is suboptimal, and argue that ownership by a single party is dominated by joint ownership with put options.     

Regulatory reform and labour earnings in Portuguese banking

This study examines changes in union contracts and wage structure during and after the introduction of regulatory reforms (deregulation and privatisation) in the Portuguese banking sector. The main finding is that, despite a relative wage erosion detected in the contract data, banking workers were able to enjoy an increasing wage premium in the period 1985–2000, probably reflecting the increasing profitability of the industry and the rise in labour productivity. The evidence also shows that some specific groups benefited relatively more than others: the least skilled and educated workforce and male workers gained more from the regulatory reforms. However, this unequal sharing of the wage premium did not raise wage inequality across ownership groups in the industry. I thank Mark Stewart, Odd Rune Straume, Ian Walker and two anonymous referees for very helpful comments. I am indebted to the Ministério do Trabalho e da Solidariedade for allowing the availability of data from Quadros de Pessoal. Financial support was provided by the Ministério da Ciência e Tecnologia under the grant BD/SFRH/2000/1291.