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.     

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.     

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.     

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。     

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。     

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.     

总经理更换、公司治理和经理人员寻租行为——来自上市公司总经理更换当年投资决策的经验证据

本文选取2003～2005年披露最终控制人的上市公司面板数据,研究不同股权性质的上市公司总经理更换当年的投资决策。研究结果显示,国有控股上市公司总经理更换当年没有明显的寻租行为,民营控股上市公司总经理更换当年存在明显的寻租行为。但是,无论是国有还是民营控股上市公司,公司治理都不能有效地抑制总经理离任前的寻租行为。     

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.     

A Rent-Seeking Experiment for the Classroom

Abstract: Recent research has demonstrated that active learning techniques improve student comprehension and retention of abstract economic ideas such as rent seeking. Instructors can reinforce the concept of rent seeking with a classroom game, particularly one involving real money. The authors improve upon a game first introduced by Goeree and Holt (1999) and later expanded upon by Bischoff and Hofmann (2002). The authors present a version of the game in which students participate in an all-pay auction, risking their own money, and discover first hand the potential inefficiencies of rent seeking. The authors suggest extensions of the rent-seeking game, including discussions of social welfare effects, equity, campaign finance reform, tax simplification, and congressional reforms designed to limit the influence of rent seeking in the economy.     

论政府管制研究从公共利益论到租金分析范式的转换

政府干预的公共利益理论存在将应然命题先验地当做实然命题处理的缺陷。政府"应该是",但不必然"是"公共利益最大化者。对于新古典经济学公共利益理论的学理困境、新政治经济学租金分析范式对政府微观干预研究的意义,应予以分析与讨论。对政府管制的研究不可避免地要回答规范性问题,而最有说服力的回答不在于讨论价值观,而是分析管制可能导致的变化对公共利益的影响。租金分析是一个能最大限度地规避争论的研究方法。     

马克思地租理论的拓展及现代价值

文章在依据经典马克思主义经济学基本假定条件构建地租理论基本模型的基础上,根据现时代经济发展变化的实际拓展了这一理论的基本假定条件,即将劳动主观条件的变化引入地租理论模型,考察了技术进步对劳动客观条件和主观条件同时发生作用这一内涵资本有机构成变化对地租理论模型的影响。文章还在马克思劳动价值理论基础上引入虚拟价值的范畴,并在新假定条件下重新构建了地租理论模型,从而进一步发展了地租理论。最后,文章根据这一新的理论模型,对人类有效使用土地自然资源和维持土地资源可持续发展进行了探讨,为我国房地产经济有序健康发展、以及政府有效调控房地产市场提供了理论支持。     

Rent Seeking for Pure Public Goods: Wealth and Group's Size Heterogeneity

We study how between‐group wealth and size asymmetries affect aggregate rent‐seeking efforts when two groups compete for the allocation of a pure public good. Unlike with previous analyses on between‐group asymmetries, we measure the utility cost of rent‐seeking in terms of the loss in private consumption an individual faces when contributing to this activity. Our main result is that fewer between‐group asymmetries do not necessarily imply greater aggregate rent‐seeking efforts. The result is at odds with the commonly held notion that the more homogeneous the contestants in a static rent‐seeking model, the greater the aggregate rent‐seeking efforts.     

寻租理论在我国的研究与发展

寻租理论是由《经济社会体制比较》杂志于1988年首先引入我国改革理论的研究的,这一理论为我国理论界分析转轨过程中腐败问题提供了新的方法和新的视点,也为我国政府适应市场经济体制的要求转变职能提供了新的思路。《经济社会体制比较》既注意刊载国外寻租理论的经典文献,又注意关注我国理论界的讨论热点,并从比较中提出了改革的对策,对推动我国改革理论的深化发挥了重要作用。20世纪90年代以后,寻租理论广泛应用于各类经济行为和现象的研究,特别是转轨经济的研究,至今这一趋势仍在继续。