Constitutional Design for a Rent Seeking Society: The Voting Rule Choice Revisited

Buchanan and Tullock's original trade-off model of constitutional design is used to analyze how constitutional design affects post-constitutional rent seeking, and, in turn, how the anticipation of post-constitution rent seeking should lead to modification of constitutional design — specifically with respect to imposing and maintaining effective (composite) supermajority decision rules.     

公司多元化折价:寻租与投资偏差

相对于业务集中的企业来说,多元化公司往往出现市场价值贬损,尽管造成这一现象的原因多种多样,但部门经理寻租引致公司经理配置资源出现偏差,则是产生公司多元化折价的重要根源之一.文章基于这一思想,通过建立模型进行了深入分析,得出多元化公司往往出现折价并给出了影响折价的一些重要因素.     

Political Competition, Rent Seeking and the Choice of Environmental Policy Instruments

This paper investigates the impact of political lobbying on the choice of environmental policy instruments. It is argued that the prevalence of pollution emission standards over more efficient policy instruments may result from rent seeking behaviour. The model further predicts that when an emission standard is used to control pollution, rival political parties have an incentive to set the same standard. There is therefore a convergence of policies. Moreover, it is shown that emission taxes are more likely to be supported and proposed by political parties which represent environmental interest groups. This feature appears to accord with the observed support for environmental taxes by Green parties in Europe, Australia, New Zealand and elsewhere.     

Political Competition, Rent Seeking and the Choice of Environmental Policy Instruments: Comment

In this comment, I analyze Damania's political economy model (Environmental and Resource Economics 13: 415–433, 1999), correcting some flaws and clarifying some ambiguities. I arguethat the political parties are identical at the outset of the game. Onlyafter the parties have chosen the instrument (standards or taxation) and thestrictness of environmental policy do the environmentalists and thepolluting firms know which party to support in the election campaign. Inequilibrium, both parties choose the same platform, so that both have anequal probability of winning the election.     

Policies to Reduce Rent Seeking in Controlled Markets

Abstract

We analyze the effects of various policies to reduce rent seeking in the controlled market in which buyers have heterogeneous valuation regarding the coveted good. The good is allocated according to the buyer-specific signal (‘test score’), which is determined by the quantity of wasteful ‘rent seeking’ exerted by the buyer. We consider three common forms of market control: minimum qualification score, quota, and price ceiling. The potential buyers with higher valuations are more likely to receive the good in equilibrium, while they exert more rent-seeking efforts. Marginally relaxing market control does not necessarily decrease the aggregated amount of rent-seeking activities, and the effectiveness of policy measures usually depends on the current degree of competitiveness in the market.     

股权再融资、盈余管理与大股东的寻租行为

我国上市公司处于大股东的超强控制状态,大股东与中小股东之间存在严重的信息不对称,导致大股东在股权再融资过程中表现出强烈的盈余管理动机.本文研究了我国资本市场参与者的行为与盈余管理之间的关系,并分析了对资本配置效率的影响效应.大股东通过操纵报告盈余来改变会计盈余的时间分布和误导投资者,从而攫取更多的隐性收益,造成资本市场配置效率的降低.研究结果表明:(1)大股东通过盈余管理在股权再融资过程中可以获得中小股东无法得到的隐性收益;(2)大股东的收益随着盈余管理程度的增加而提升,中小股东的财富随着盈余管理程度的增加而降低;(3)盈余管理程度的增加将降低上市公司的资本配置效率和企业价值.因此,大股东通过盈余管理实现了对小股东财富的掠夺效应,造成了上市公司资本配置效率、公司价值、声誉和后续融资能力的下降.     

Rent Seeking and Allocative Efficiency

This paper considers a rent‐seeking game (specifically, a winner‐takes‐all contest) with incomplete information. By allowing for sequential moves, a Bayesian‐Stackelberg equilibrium can be constructed. It can be shown that, at the Bayesian‐Stackelberg equilibrium, it is always possible that the allocative efficiency argument fails. That is, there are cases in which the Stackelberg follower is more efficient but loses the contest. Using a specific class of distributions, it is also shown that sometimes the corrupt official will choose the Bayesian‐Stackelberg equilibrium over the Bayesian‐Nash equilibrium in order to maximise the expected bribe revenue. That is, when designing the rules of the rent‐seeking game, the dynamic nature of competition will be taken into account.     

矿产资源租若干问题探讨

矿产资源租是矿产资源所有者所获得的矿产资源价值,矿产品价格高涨突显了矿产资源租问题的重要性.     

Rent-seeking,R&D,and productivity

To investigate whether rent-seeking discourages productivity, we consider a third-market model, in which a domestic firm and a foreign firm engage in both Research and Development (R&D) and output competition. We show that the relationship between rent-seeking and productivity depends on two forces. On the one hand, rent-seeking increases the marginal benefit of R&D and encourages productivity. On the other hand, a lower production cost due to R&D enables the government to extract the rent from the firm to a greater extent and discourages the productivity. Which force is dominant depends on the level of corruption or, as an alternative interpretation, the weight the government attaches to political contributions. Unlike the monotonic relationship proposed by the literature, we find a non-monotonic relationship between rent-seeking and productivity.     

行业租金、行业协会与行业自我治理

本文引入行业特质性资源与行业租金概念,指出行业租金消散是行业协会在市场经济中内生产生的根本动因.在行业自律机制、准公共产品机制、俱乐部产品机制、集体行动机制和第三方实施机制的支持下,行业协会的功能主要体现在两个方面:行业自律和行业提升;其中行业自律功能主要体现为对行业租金消散的制止,行业提升功能主要体现为使行业租金的增加.     

Time Delay and the Extraction of Information Rent in Regulation

A crucial idea in Laffont and Tirole (1993) is the extraction of costly information rent through production distortion. In this paper we augment the Laffont-Tirole model with time delay, highlighting the possibility of further rent extraction through consumption distortion due to the delayed implementation of a public project. This consumption distortion through delay in essence relaxes the incentive constraint in the presence of asymmetric information. We show that a positive but finite delay can be optimal in regulation, and provide a condition differentiating welfare-improving delays from welfare-worsening ones. This condition generalizes the shutdown condition of an inefficient firm in the Laffont-Tirole model.     

农业地租的动态非均衡分析

资本有机构成和地权流转等因素一旦发生变化,马克思农业地租模型的结论就需要重新审视.在坚持劳动价值论和生产价格理论的基础上,运用动态非均衡分析工具,把剩余价值、资本有机构成、地权流转等变量内生化,试图建立起农业绝对地租与级差地租的动态非均衡一般分析框架.     

西方竞租理论发展过程与最新拓展

竞租理论源于农业竞租理论,其中做出突出贡献和影响的是屠能。随着城市的发展,城市竞租理论得以快速发展,在阿隆索之前,新古典经济学、土地经济学、生态经济学等学派均形成了自己的主要观点。阿隆索继承新古典经济学的思想建立了经典的城市竞租模型,成为了城市经济学重要的基础理论之一。随着新的城市问题的出现,城市竞租理论在城市特征、交通成本、效用等模型方面以及在经验检验方法方面均有拓展。我国的城市问题与西方国家有所不同,文章也指出了竞租理论在我国应用的拓展展望。     

Wages,Profits, and Rent‐Sharing in an Open Economy

This paper examines the link between international trade and labor market bargaining power. It reviews simple theories of rent‐sharing in closed and open economies. Earlier studies on the issue of rent‐sharing implicitly assume a closed economy. This assumption may provide some misleading results, especially for studying current developments in the US labor market. Empirical results suggest that the apparent decline in labor’s bargaining power in US manufacturing may be attributable to growing international integration.     

Developmental Rent Management Analysis: Learning,Upgrading, and Innovation

In this article, I construct an original analytical framework, called the developmental rent management analysis (DRMA), for the analysis of rents and rent management. This framework is based on the premise that successful rent management depends on political and institutional arrangements to produce incentives and pressures for technical upgrading and innovation. This is because, while rents are created for a variety of purposes, rent outcomes — whether growth-enhancing or growth-reducing — depend on a set of political, institutional, and market conditions that take place formally and informally. Therefore, the key objective of the DRMA framework is to understand how a country’s politics, institutions, and industries are configured to incentivize and compel industrial upgrading. Thus, DRMA enables a broader and more complex understanding of the various factors at play in the process of development. I provide an illustrative application of the DRMA framework using the Vietnamese experience of adopting third-generation technology in the telecommunications industry.     

我国会计寻租的原因探析

在我国,一些企业为了自身利益,如为了保住上市公司资格等原因而进行会计寻租。会计寻租会导致会计信息失真,造成租值耗散或效率损失,严重破坏了市场的正常运行环境。为了维护良好的经济运行环境,可以通过改进准则制定的监督机制,寻求管制者与被管制者之间的均衡点,合理配置政府行政主管部门的事务管理权等措施遏制会计寻租现象。     

融资成本、寻租行为和企业内部资本配置

本文构造了一个两层次委托代理模型,强调了外部资本市场和内部资本市场之间的相互作用,分析表明,资本配置扭曲和资本使用效率低下的关键是外部资本市场运作不完善对企业内部管理者的寻租行为的影响。本文的分析表明,融资成本偏低的外部资本市场不仅会促使企业CEO过分扩大融资规模,而且会加剧企业内部管理者的寻租行为,导致资本配置不当、投资缺乏效率的不良后果。本文的政策含义是,必须改变融资成本偏低的现状,并加强公司治理结构建设,才能解决我国企业融资过热、资本使用效率低下等一系列问题。     

The Uncertainty of Academic Rent and Income Inequality: The OECD Panel Evidence

The article presents an alternative view on the education—income inequality relationship, which calls into question the neoclassical claim that education increases labor productivity and hence contributes to a higher output, wage and consequently more even income distribution. In the context of public policies, education needs to be seen not only as a factor of income mobility, but also as a “positional good,” which benefits graduates at the expense of non-graduates. Education generates “academic rent,” by which we mean uneven remuneration of workers based on academic signs of distinctions that do not necessarily reflect differences in productivity. Using the robust panel model on a sample of OECD (Organization of Economic Co-operation and Development) countries from 1980 to 2015, we show that investments in human capital lead to lower inequality, but overinvestments tends to increase income inequality, which may be related to academic rent. In discussing this result, we consider that uncertainty of academic rent under the condition of a rapid transformation of the workplace caused by the fourth industrial revolution.     

基于微观层面的写字楼租金影响因素研究述评

写字楼市场已成为当前房地产开发投资的重点领域,写字楼租金研究也备受关注。写字楼租金的影响因素研究可分为微观层面的研究和宏观层面的研究。本文聚焦于微观层面,从解释租金和检验因素两个维度对有关写字楼或办公单元租金的影响因素的相关文献进行了梳理,着重关注写字楼租金影响因素的研究内容、研究方法和最新研究进展。     

Unions: Rent Creators or Extractors?*

This paper proposes a model of workplace‐specific unions that integrates two views of what unions do. One view holds that unions mainly engage in rent extraction. Another view holds that unions mainly engage in rent creation by providing agency services that increase workplace productivity. We demonstrate that the choice between the two activities is systematically related to the economic and regulatory environment in which the union operates. Product market competition encourages rent creation, while labor market deregulation encourages rent extraction. Moreover, we provide a rationale for why firms may want to subsidize unions.