Optimal effort in the principal-agent problem with time-inconsistent preferences

This paper incorporates an agent’s time-inconsistent preferences into the Sannikov (2008) contract model to explore the effects of an agent’s preferences on his own behaviors: the incentive effort choice, the optimal retirement time and the consumption flow during his whole career life. We find the agent’s time inconsistency makes it difficult for him to be motivated and makes him need more compensation. An agent’s time-inconsistency erodes both the principal and his own income. The time-inconsistent agent will choose a lower incentive effort level, retire at an earlier time and have a lower consumption flow compared with his time-consistent peer. The time-inconsistent preference exactly influences the agents behavior and makes the agency problem more serious. Therefore, the firm has to cost more to stimulate such a time-inconsistent agent, which will damage the firms profits, as well as the efficiency.     

Problems in Acquiring Mineral Revenues for Financing Economic Development: A Case Study of Zambia During 1970–78

A bstract . During the 1970s Zambia granted tax incentives to transnational mining companies (thereby foregoing some revenue ) in order to achieve expected investment benefits to the economy and government. The Government also acquired ownership interests in the companies via asset acquisition. Global market forces turned against Zambia's interests, and expected benefits were not forthcoming because company profits had become the sole tax base in the mineral sector. Zambia's experience from 1970 to 1978 suggests that it and other mineral export countries should (a) evaluate carefully whether reducing the effective tax rate on company profits actually induces investment , and (b) consider thoroughly whether a tax scheme that includes a proper mix of profit, mineral and export levies is more appropriate than a single tax base.     

Endogenous trading in credit default swaps

We introduce a real options model in order to quantify the moral hazard impact of credit default swap (CDS) positions on the corporate default probabilities. Moral hazard is widely addressed in the insurance literature, where the insured agent may become less cautious about preventing the risk from occurring. Importantly, with CDS the moral hazard problem may be magnified since one can buy multiple protections for the same bond. To illustrate this issue, we consider a firm with the possibility of switching from an investment to another one. An investor can influence the strategic decisions of the firm and can also trade CDS written on the firm. We analyze how the decisions of the investor influence the firm value when he is allowed to trade credit default contracts on the firm’s debt. Our model involves a time-dependent optimal stopping problem, which we study analytically and numerically, using the Longstaff–Schwartz algorithm. We identify the situations where the investor exercises the switching option with a loss, and we measure the impact on the firm’s value and firm’s default probability. Contrary to the common intuition, the investors’ optimal behavior does not systematically consist in buying CDSs and increase the default probabilities. Instead, large indifference zones exist, where no arbitrage profits can be realized. As the number of the CDSs in the position increases to exceed several times the level of a complete insurance, we enter in the zone where arbitrage profits can be made. These are obtained by implementing very aggressive strategies (i.e., increasing substantially the default probability by producing losses to the firm). The profits increase sharply as we exit the indifference zone.     

The new view of the property tax A reformulation

The ‘new view’ of the property tax is reformulated within the context of a model with interjurisdictional competition, endogenous local public services, individuals who are segregated into homogeneous communities according to tastes for local public services, a simple form of land use zoning, and a political or constitutional constraint on the use of head taxes by local governments. Expressions for the ‘profits tax’ and ‘excise tax’ effects of the property tax are derived. The effects of a ‘consumption distortion’ away from government services due to local reluctance to tax mobile capital are also examined.     

Retaining skilled employees: A human capital model with innovation and entrepreneurship

In his seminal paper, Becker argues that firms never invest in general human capital in a frictionless labor market. Nevertheless, empirical evidence shows the opposite. This paper sheds light on this puzzle by developing a principal–agent model with human capital investments. The novel feature of the model is that specific human capital increases the agent's probability to innovate. Innovation brings the opportunity of entrepreneurship, which means losing a skilled agent for the principal. The results show that higher entrepreneurial income increases the risk of employee departure and the principal may use general human capital investment for retention.     

Fringe Benefits of Workers in Nonmanufacturing Industries

A bstract . Fringe benefits have increased rapidly during recent decades. While determinants of manufacturing workers' fringes have been investigated, little information is available about those of nonmanufacturing workers. In this study we investigate factors that determine the levels of fringes of office and nonoffice workers provided by private-sector nonmanufacturing establishments. The factors are classified by characteristics of employees (such as income, marginal tax rate, union status ), of firms (such as size, location and industry ), and other variables. Using regression analysis we find employee income, marginal tax rate, union status and firm size consistently and positively related to fringe benefits. Other variables'coefficients in the equation usually possess the sign predicted by the model but sometimes do not attain statistical significance at conventional levels. We conclude that economic models of fringe benefits accurately represent behavior in nonmanufacturing establishments.     

Organizational Surveillance of Computer-Mediated Workplace Communication: Employee Privacy Concerns and Responses

Email, social media, and other types of computer-mediated workplace communication tools can enhance flexibility in how employees perform their jobs, expand networking opportunities, increase profits, cut costs, and enable collaboration among diverse groups across the globe. Despite their advantages, these technology tools can also cause security breaches, financial loss, employee distraction, and lawsuits. To prevent such damaging consequences, many companies monitor their employees’ computer-mediated workplace communication. However, this surveillance is often met with resistance from employees as it taps into concerns over workers’ privacy rights, due process, and fairness. We examine these employee concerns through an empirical study of full-time working adults’ beliefs about their computer-mediated workplace communication privacy and their evaluations of organizational justice, trust in upper management, and commitment to the organization. Our results suggest that employees who perceive less computer-mediated workplace communication privacy tend to view their organization’s policies as less fair, trust upper management less, and demonstrate less commitment to their organizations. Furthermore, results indicate that procedural justice mediated the relationship between privacy and organizational commitment and moderated the relationship between privacy and organizational trust.     

Rater Bias and Incentive Provision

The tendency of supervisors to judge an employee as either good or bad and then to seek out evidence supporting that earlier established opinion is regarded as one of the major problems of performance appraisal. We investigate the implications of this rater bias in a dynamic moral hazard model with a wealth‐constrained agent. Although rater bias weakens the agent's incentives to exert effort in late periods, at the same time it strengthens implicit incentives in early periods. Under the optimal contract, as long as rater bias is not overly strong, its adverse effect on late‐period incentives is fully offset by exploitation of stronger early‐period incentives and thereby leaves the principal's profits unchanged.     

An options pricing approach to ramping rate restrictions at hydro power plants

This paper investigates the impact of ramping rate restrictions imposed on hydro operations to protect aquatic ecosystems. The optimal ramping decision is specified as an optimal control problem which results in a Hamilton Jacobi Bellman (HJB) equation. Electricity prices are modelled as a regime switching stochastic process. The optimal control is determined by solving the HJB equation numerically using a fully implicit finite difference approach with semi-Lagrangian time stepping. The paper focuses on the effect of ramping restrictions on a hydro plant׳s value and optimal operations, and provides an analysis of which factors cause ramping restrictions to have a greater or lesser impact on profitability. It is shown that hydro plant value is negatively affected by ramping restrictions, but the extent of the impact depends on key parameters which determine the desirability of frequent changes in water release rates. Interestingly for the case considered, value is not sensitive to ramping restrictions over a large range of restrictions. The results point to the importance of accurately modelling electricity prices in gauging the trade offs involved in imposing restrictions on hydro operators which may hinder their ability to respond to volatile electricity prices and meet peak demands.     

企业劳动契约的激励模型分析——一种发生在道德风险之前的逆向选择问题

本文分析了企业劳动契约的制定过程以及企业和员工之间的委托代理关系,企业在制定劳动契约时会面临发生在道德风险之前的逆向选择问题。在将其与企业的人力资源管理实践相结合构造出相关模型,以及对这一委托代理模型的激励约束进行分析之后,得出这样的结论:企业作为委托人在制定劳动契约时应该综合考虑代理人(员工)的外在机会效用水平,内生成本函数,效用偏好函数和努力水平等激励影响因素。     

Dynamic incentive contracts with termination threats

We consider a dynamic moral hazard model where the principal offers a series of short-run contracts. We study the optimal mix of two alternative instruments for incentive provision: a performance based wage (a “carrot”) and a termination threat (a “stick”). At any given point in time, these instruments are substitutes in the provision of incentives. We are particularly interested in the dynamic interaction of these two instruments. Both carrot and stick are used more intensively as the agent approaches the end of his finite life. The sharing of the surplus of the relationship plays a key role: a termination threat is included in the optimal contract if and only if the agent’s expected future gain from the relationship is sufficiently high, compared to the principal’s expected future gain. Also, a termination threat is more likely to be optimal if output depends more on “luck” than on effort, if the discount factor is high, or if the agent’s productivity is low. The model, provided that the optimal contract includes a termination threat, essentially provides an alternative explanation for upward-sloping wage profiles even in the absence of full-commitment.     

纳入品牌效应的纵向合作广告成本直接分担模型研究

本文研究了合作广告成本直接分担方式下的供应链纵向合作广告问题,考虑了制造商的全国性广告对品牌效应的影响,运用微分对策方法建立模型,根据最优控制理论的极值原理和Hanmilton-Jacobi-Bellman(HJB)方程求得Stackelberg博弈和协同合作博弈下的最优广告策略,并对模型的最优解进行了比较分析。     

Reassessing Moral Legitimacy in Times of Instability

The presence of conflicting cues about what is legitimate provided by various stakeholders, begs the question of how the legitimacy of contested institutionalized practices is justified. Recent critique of tax minimization strategies exemplifies this difficulty: on one hand, practitioners need to increase shareholders' profits; on the other, a growing number of stakeholders push for ‘fairer’ corporate tax payments. Conducted during a time of public criticism of Australian corporate tax strategies, our study draws on justifications of corporate tax minimization strategies by senior tax practitioners and corporate submissions to a Senate Inquiry on corporate tax avoidance. The study explores how legitimacy judgements come under pressure by conflicting cues. Through the application of Boltanski and Thévenot's (2006) Economies of Worth (EW) framework, we advance legitimacy scholarship by clarifying what constitutes situated judgements in times of instability. Our work puts forward the concept of perceived forecasted consensus as a guide for individuals in making situated legitimacy judgements in times of instability.     

Locally robust contracts for moral hazard

We consider a moral hazard problem in which the principal has a slight uncertainty about how the agent’s actions translate into output. An incentive contract can be made robust against an $ϵ$ amount of uncertainty, at the cost of a loss to the principal on the order of $\sqrt{ϵ}$, by refunding a small fraction of profit to the agent. We show that as $ϵ$ goes to zero, this construction is essentially optimal, in the sense of minimizing the worst-case loss, among all modifications to the contract that do not depend on the details of the environment.     

Turnpike property and convergence rate for an investment model with general utility functions

In this paper we aim to address two questions faced by a long-term investor with a power-type utility at high levels of wealth: one is whether the turnpike property still holds for a general utility that is not necessarily differentiable or strictly concave, the other is whether the error and the convergence rate of the turnpike property can be estimated. We give positive answers to both questions. To achieve these results, we first show that there is a classical solution to the HJB equation and give a representation of the solution in terms of the dual function of the solution to the dual HJB equation. We demonstrate the usefulness of that representation with some nontrivial examples that would be difficult to solve with the trial and error method. We then combine the dual method and the partial differential equation method to give a direct proof to the turnpike property and to estimate the error and the convergence rate of the optimal policy when the utility function is continuously differentiable and strictly concave. We finally relax the conditions of the utility function and provide some sufficient conditions that guarantee the turnpike property and the convergence rate in terms of both primal and dual utility functions.     

Comparative statics for profit-maximizing and labor-managed cournot oligopolies

Comparative static results are derived for two types of oligopoly: profit-maximizing and labor-managed Cournot oligopolies. After establishing a general principle for comparative statics for oligopoly, we will examine how a shift in the demand function, changes in the wage rate, indirect tax rates and fixed costs, and technical change affect the equilibrium Cournot industry and firms‘ outputs, firms’ profits and dividends per unit of labor. We will also analyze the effects of entry. Our analysis makes an extensive use of the relationship existing between an individual firm's and industry outputs. We will derive two kinds of stability conditions: one behavioristic and the other computational. Finally, we will conduct comparative static analysis for mixed oligopoly where several profit-maximizing and labor-managed firms co-exist.     

TAX COMPETITION AS A CAUSE OF FALLING CORPORATE INCOME TAX RATES: A SURVEY OF EMPIRICAL LITERATURE

Abstract Since the mid 1980s, tax rates on corporate income have declined in most industrialized countries. Tax competition between countries for mobile capital has frequently been mentioned as an explanation for this development. A vast empirical literature dealing with tax competition for mobile capital has emerged. This paper categorizes and summarizes the existing empirical studies on this issue. Particular focus is placed on the isolation of the substantive implications the quantitative study outcomes convey. Given the empirical evidence surveyed, it appears that tax rates indeed decline due to tax competition between countries, and in particular due to competition for profits. In addition to summarizing the substantive implications of the existing empirical literature, the paper addresses the question of whether the existing studies can convincingly isolate tax competition as a driver of falling corporate income tax rates.     

Credibility and Monitoring: Outsourcing as a Commitment Device

We analyze an environment plagued by double moral hazard where the agent’s effort level and the principal’s precision in monitoring are not contractible. In such an environment, the principal tends to over‐monitor thereby inducing low effort. To ease the latter problem, the principal may choose to increase monitoring costs by outsourcing the activity. As a result equilibrium monitoring is reduced and incentives become more powerful. This choice is particularly likely when the worker’s effort is an important factor in determining output.     

税收征管、企业避税与企业投资效率

基于委托代理理论,深入探讨了税收征管、企业避税与企业投资效率三者之间的关系,选取2008—2012年A股上市公司为样本,实证研究发现:税收征管有助于降低企业避税程度;企业避税活动会降低企业投资效率;税收征管有助于提高企业投资效率;税收征管有助于缓解企业避税与企业投资效率之间的负相关关系。     

Bad temptation

We study a static self-control model in which an agent’s preference, temptation ranking, and cost of self-control drive her choices among a finite set of options. We show it is without loss to assume the agent’s temptation ranking is the opposite of her preference. We characterize the model by relaxing the Weak Axiom of Revealed Preference (WARP), and exploit WARP violations to identify the model’s parameters.