家族控制与企业创新投入

家族企业对社会情感财富目标的追求是其区别于非家族企业的重要特性，社会情感财富目标与企业经济利益间冲突对企业R&D投入的影响不容忽视。以社会情感财富为理论基础，基于573家上市家族企业2011-2015年的面板数据，分析受市场化程度影响时，家族涉入情境下信息透明度对企业R&D投入的影响。结果显示：信息透明度可以有效缓解信息不对称和代理冲突，促进企业R&D投入；家族控制对R&D投入有消极影响；当企业信息透明度较高时，会抑制家族所有者为个人谋取私利的动机，进而增强其对企业R&D投资的积极作用。在市场化程度更高、产权保护力度较大的地区，信息透明度会缓解家族控制权对R&D投入的消极作用。     

不确定环境下项目投融资决策交互关系研究进展

本文在阐述以项目为对象的投融资决策交互关系特性的基础上,从以下三方面对不确定性环境下项目投融资决策交互关系的相关研究进行了梳理:一,外生性财务变量对投融资决策的影响;二,代理冲突对投融资决策交互关系的影响;三,非对称信息对投融资决策的影响。在此基础上,提出了项目投融资决策交互关系的进一步研究方向。     

ON THE CONFLICT–POVERTY NEXUS

We develop a model to explore the inter-relationships between conflict and economic activity. We construct a simple two-period model where consumption and investment decisions are made in the presence of governments who consider initiating diversionary conflict to raise their chances of remaining in power. Economies with selfish leaders and lower gains from capital formation may fall prey to engaging in avoidable conflicts thereby lowering investment and hence future growth. Using panel data for over 152 countries from 1950 to 2000, we find evidence for conflict lowering economic growth and, after conditioning on the initial conditions of geography, private, public, and human capital investment, lower growth raising the likelihood of conflict. These results are broadly consistent with our model.     

RANDOM SHOCK UNCERTAINTY AND INVESTMENT REVERSIBILITY: REAL OPTION FRAMEWORK

This paper examines, in the presence of random shock, how changes in reversibility of investment affect a firm's optimal investment strategies including the investment timing (trigger) and quantity. Existing results do not consider random shock, where the quantity is independent of the degree of reversibility and the investment trigger is always decreasing with the degree of reversibility. In contrast, we show that with random shock, the quantity exhibits an inverse U‐shape, and the investment trigger is not always monotonically decreasing with the degree of reversibility. Additionally, we show that the firm undertakes a smaller quantity with random shock than without random shock for any degree of reversibility. Finally, we find that the presence of random shock decreases firm value, which implies that random shock is costly for firms.     

Parental preference for investment risk incites family strife

Older stronger siblings in many birds and mammals enjoy decisive and often lethal advantages in sibling competitions by virtue of being born or hatching first. Asynchronous hatching in birds divides the brood into core (advantaged) and marginal (disadvantaged) elements generating an asymmetric sibling rivalry with often fatal outcomes. Given that these asymmetries are under parental control, the obvious question is why parents seem to incite family conflict. Here I show in a model system (an altricial songbird) that family strife in the form of fatal sibling rivalry arises as a consequence of parental investor??s appetite for risk: in accord with an axiom of investment theory, obtaining greater potential rewards required taking greater risks. I analyze the risk and reward of investment in different family structures using a tool borrowed from modern portfolio theory, and show that the most successful parents gambled with brood size, placing bets on incipient families that often proved too large. Failed bets triggered a fatal sibling rivalry for insufficient resources. Parents driven to maximize reproductive success incited family strife among their offspring.     

Labor Conflict and Foreign Investments: An Analysis of FDI in India

This paper analyzes patterns of foreign direct investment in India. We investigate how labor conflict, credit constraints, and indicators of a state's economic health influence location decisions of foreign firms. We account for the possible endogeneity of labor conflict variables in modeling the location decisions of foreign firms. This is accomplished by using a state‐specific fixed effects framework that captures the presence of unobservables, which may influence investment decisions and labor unrest simultaneously. Results indicate that labor unrest is endogenous across the states of India, and has a strong negative impact on foreign investment.     

短缺中的膨胀:我国基础建设投资问题的经济学分析

当前,我国各地基础建设投资膨胀是一个相当普遍的问题,其实质是基础建设投资在长期短缺下的骤然增长,是结构失衡的集中体现。造成基础建设投资过度膨胀的原因主要有以下几个方面:地方对资源的争夺;投资决策者目标异化;地方预算软化;投资利率刚性等。     

股权结构、会计稳健性与资本投资效率研究综述

公司的股权结构引发利益相关者间的委托代理问题和信息不对称问题,从而导致公司的非效率投资行为,而会计稳健性作为一种协调公司契约各方利益冲突的机制,它能有效降低契约各方的代理成本,在中国资本市场中提高会计稳健性有其现实意义,并且应充分体现会计稳健性的治理价值。     

土地投资与土地租赁最优动态合约设计

在现有的制度框架下,由于种种因素所导致的土地使用不当或开发过度而造成的土地质量下降问题日益严重,基于此,文章在充分考虑农业生产活动和不完全合约的特征以及土地质量的动态演变下建立了一个动态的土地最优租赁模型。受投资和自然侵蚀（主要指土地使用不当或过度使用）的影响,土地质量将随时间而改变,在完全信息条件下,以固定报酬为租赁者参与条件,土地所有者的最优为投资与劳动投入的边际收益等于边际成本。在不完全信息条件下,土地所有者的最优合约由三个参数（单位投资成本,产出分享比例参数,为固定支付数量参数）决定。模型显示分成制合约能够对土地租赁者给予足够的投资激励,土地所有者可以取得投资和努力投入的最优。     

外国直接投资的区域分布及其经济增长效应

本文以经济增长理论为背景 ,运用多维方差分析模型 ,对我国地区间GDP差距、国内投资数量差距、国内投资效率差距、FDI数量差距和FDI效率差距等关键变量进行了分析研究。结果表明 ,FDI的区域分布不能有效解释各地区经济的不平衡状况 ,相反 ,国内投资的区域差距 ,特别是在投资效率上的显著差别 ,是造成区域经济差距长期存在的主要因素 ,由此引出了以消除投资效率差异为核心的区域政策取向。     

Credit availability and investment: Lessons from the “great recession”

The paper argues that the traditional difficulty encountered in finding evidence on the effects of credit availability on economic activity depends on the fact that these effects are powerful but rare and vary with the cycle. The global financial crisis offers an opportunity to test this assumption. The paper exploits a unique dataset, including direct information on credit rationing for 1200 Italian firms over the last twenty years. We find that the elasticity of a firm’s investment to the availability of bank credit has been significant in periods of economic contraction, but not in other periods (the ability to tap alternative sources of finance may arguably explain this result) and that during the global crisis the impact of credit quantity constraints on Italian investment in manufacturing was significant.     

Conflict prevention by Bayesian persuasion

Drawing upon the Bayesian persuasion literature, I show that a mediator can provide conflicting parties strategically with information to decrease the ex-ante war probability. In a conflict between two parties with private information about military strength, the mediator generates information about each conflicting party's strength and commits to sharing the obtained information with the respective opponent. The conflicting parties can be convinced not to fight each other. The conflicting parties benefit from mediation, as the ex-ante war probability is reduced. The benefit is taken up by weak conflicting parties. This benefit is larger when war is costlier and when the war probability absent mediation is higher.     

年轻高管与企业股价崩盘风险：来自“代理冲突观”的证据*

在企业纷纷实施高管年轻化战略的背景下，本文从股价崩盘风险的视角分析和检验了年轻高管风险偏好的经济后果及其作用机理。本文基于“个体认知观”和“代理冲突观”展开理论推演，采用中国沪深A股非金融上市公司的数据，检验发现，年轻高管会显著加剧企业未来的股价崩盘风险，且这种影响主要存在于民营企业，在国有企业并不显著。进一步针对具体作用机制的检验发现，年轻高管在投资决策中选择了更多能迅速提升个人收益的风险性投资项目，但在不能迅速提升个人收益的风险性投资项目上与年长高管没有显著差异。同时，年轻高管对股价崩盘风险的加剧效应仅仅存在于高管在上市公司领取薪酬的样本企业，且更高的独立董事比例能显著抑制年轻高管的股价崩盘风险加剧效应。这表明，年轻高管个体认知层面的风险偏好被其追求个人私利最大化的代理冲突所扭曲，进而为年轻高管风险偏好的“代理冲突观”提供了实证证据。     

年轻高管与企业股价崩盘风险：来自“代理冲突观”的证据*

在企业纷纷实施高管年轻化战略的背景下，本文从股价崩盘风险的视角分析和检验了年轻高管风险偏好的经济后果及其作用机理。本文基于“个体认知观”和“代理冲突观”展开理论推演，采用中国沪深A股非金融上市公司的数据，检验发现，年轻高管会显著加剧企业未来的股价崩盘风险，且这种影响主要存在于民营企业，在国有企业并不显著。进一步针对具体作用机制的检验发现，年轻高管在投资决策中选择了更多能迅速提升个人收益的风险性投资项目，但在不能迅速提升个人收益的风险性投资项目上与年长高管没有显著差异。同时，年轻高管对股价崩盘风险的加剧效应仅仅存在于高管在上市公司领取薪酬的样本企业，且更高的独立董事比例能显著抑制年轻高管的股价崩盘风险加剧效应。这表明，年轻高管个体认知层面的风险偏好被其追求个人私利最大化的代理冲突所扭曲，进而为年轻高管风险偏好的“代理冲突观”提供了实证证据。     

General equilibrium, markets, macroeconomics and money in a laboratory experimental environment

Summary. This paper studies a version of war of attrition where two agents with private information make irreversible investment decisions in continuous time. It analyzes a monotone equilibrium where the amount of delay in the timing of decisions is a monotone function of the strength of ones private signal: an agent with a clear signal makes a prompt decision, whereas an agent with a weak signal delays a decision to gather more information from the move of the other agent. Equilibrium delay is characterized under different assumptions about the number of investment options available.Received: 4 October 1996, Revised: 16 May 1997, JEL Classification Numbers: C72, D82, L13.Masaki Aoyagi: I am very grateful to an anonymous referee of this journal for helpful comments. I also thank seminar participants at the University of Tokyo and Kyoto University.     

IT adoption costs and productivity:: A reply to Diego Comin

Diego Comin (2002, Review of Economic Dynamics 5 (2)), critiques my paper “Technology adoption costs and productivity growth: The transition to information technology” (2002, Review of Economic Dynamics 5 (2)), concluding that all of my major results are unfounded. I contend, to the contrary, that my results hold up against his criticism. My paper analyzes the effect of investment adjustment costs on subsequent productivity growth for manufacturing industries. I find that adjustment costs increased substantially during the late 70's and early 80's and that this increase is associated with increased investment in information technology. I also estimate the effect of these adjustment costs on BLS productivity growth estimates. This analysis uses two datasets, the NBER–CES Manufacturing Industry Database (Bartelsman and Gray, 1996. NBER Working Paper 205) and the BLS Manufacturing Productivity release of April 2001. For the former I calculate productivity growth using a standard Solow residual; for the latter, I use BLS productivity growth estimates. Comin's critique, however, uses a different measure entirely. He introduces a “corrected TFP” measure that I believe is flawed. Most of his critique uses this measure, rather than the standard productivity growth measures I use. As a consequence, most of his criticism is not actually about my paper, but is, instead, about a paper Comin might have written using his measure. And because this measure is flawed, so is this alternative. In addition, he raises criticism of my evidence of a link between information technology (IT) and adjustment costs and of my corrections to BLS productivity estimates. I present additional evidence to address these concerns and to examine the robustness of my results.     

On the Origins of Property Rights: Conflict and Production in the State of Nature

I analyse the emergence of property rights in a model of conflict and production in the absence of institutions of enforcement. The population of agents evolves dynamically through conflicts for possession of factor goods among pairs of randomly matched agents. Conflicts are incomplete information wars of attrition with an agent's type consisting of his or her independently drawn valuation of the prize and cost of competing for it. I prove equilibrium existence and show that in the steady state of the game, the population sorts into two stable groups (resource "haves" and "have-nots") in accordance with a known function of their primitive types.     

Influence and inefficiency in the internal capital market

I model inefficient resource allocations in M-form organizations due to influence activities by division managers that skew capital budgets in their favor. Corporate headquarters receives two types of signals about investment opportunities: private signals that can be distorted by managers, and public signals that are undistorted but noisy. Headquarters faces a tradeoff between the cost of attaining an accurate private signal and the value of the information the signal provides. In contrast to existing models of “socialism” in internal capital markets, I show that investment sensitivity to Tobin's Q is higher than first-best in firms where division managers hold equity (a result consistent with evidence presented in Scharfstein, 1998). When managers face high private costs from distorting information (equity holdings), headquarters may commit to investment contracts that place “too little” weight on private signals and “too much” weight on public signals (i.e. Q). This result has implications for managers in the design of capital budgeting processes and incentive compensation systems.     

我国地区经济差距与投资差距的实证分析

本文通过泰尔指数将地区经济差距和投资差距量化,并对两者之间的变动趋势进行了分析研究.结果表明,地区投资分布的不均衡程度大于地区经济的不均衡,而且我国地区经济差距与投资差距在20世纪80年代到90年代中后期具有极为相似的变动趋势,到90年代后期则出现背离.其主要原因在于,技术、人力资本等带来的投资效率提高对我国地区经济增长的作用越来越大,地区经济差距是投资数量与效率的地区差距综合作用的结果.     

INFORMATION GATHERING BY A PRINCIPAL*

In the standard principal–agent model, the information structure is fixed. In this article the principal can choose to acquire additional information about the state of the world before he contracts with an agent. In the event that the principal acquires this information, the agent never learns what the principal knows about the state of the world. I examine cases where the agent can and cannot observe whether the principal has acquired the additional information. The implications for risk sharing, information acquisition, investment, and welfare are examined for both cases.