Expertise, Subversion, and Bureaucratic Discretion

This article examines a legislature's delegation of policy-makingauthority to an imperfectly controlled, expert bureaucrat. Thelegislature can reduce the bureaucrat's expertise advantagethrough costly investigations of its own before delegating.Further, the bureaucrat is granted discretionary bounds by thelegislature, but can subvert legislative dictates by steppingbeyond them at some cost. I analyze the interaction of preferencedivergence, investigation cost to the legislature, and subversioncost to the bureaucrat on the decision to delegate. The modelshows that, because of the equilibrium effect of subversionon discretion, bureaucrats will want subversion of legislativedictates to be difficult, while legislators want it to be relativelyeasy. It also highlights an indirect effect between preferencedivergence and discretion: preference divergence leads the legislatureto become more expert on policy matters, which leads it to delegateless.     

股权激励与代理成本

传统以管理费用率作为代理成本的替代不能恰当地反映管理者在职消费和职务侵占的真实水平,本文用经过Jones模型纠正的费用率作为代理成本的替代,考察了所有权性质、总经理持股与否及持股比例对代理成本的影响。本文提供了私有制下总经理适当持股有利于降低代理成本的可靠证据,为中国上市公司即将展开的股权激励计划提供证据的支持。     

Endogenous Verifiability and Optimality in Agency

This paper investigates the optimal contract design in a principal-agent model where verification of an agent's action is endogenously determined through strategic interactions between contracting parties. We derive a necessary and sufficient condition for the first best outcome to be implemented as an equilibrium. The equilibrium has the following features: (i) The action level that the agent chooses is not verified even if it is possible. (ii) Nevertheless, the first best can be attained by making a contract contingent on the unverified action. Journal of Economic Literature Classification Numbers: D20, K40.     

Agency Costs in Dynamic Economic Models

We consider an overlapping generations economy where capital is produced from bank loans under stochastic constant returns to scale, and subject to idiosyncratic shocks whose realisations are costly to verify. Our formulation differs from earlier work in permitting investment projects to be infinitely divisible and private agency costs to be convex. If there are external economies to financial intermediation, then deviations from steady-state output are negatively correlated with the spread between loan and deposit rates. Moreover, the capital stock correspondence is set-valued, a result consistent with poverty traps, growth cycles, and hump-shaped impulse response functions.     

Monetary Policy, Agency Costs and Output Dynamics

This paper examines the role of financial market imperfections for output reactions to nominal interest rate shocks. Empirical evidence shows a hump-shaped impulse response function of output and suggests that credit supply co-moves with output. A monetary business cycle model with staggered price setting is presented where the firms' outlays for capital and labor must be covered by the sum of net worth of entrepreneurs and loans in the form of debt contracts. These properties are shown to generate a hump-shaped impulse response of output, which takes on the smooth and persistent appearance of the empirical output response when nominal wages are set in a staggered way, too.     

媒体监督、公司治理与代理成本

文章以2001-2009年沪深两市上市公司为样本,考察了媒体监督、公司治理与代理成本之间的关系。研究发现,媒体监督能够降低企业的代理成本、提高代理效率;在降低代理成本和提高代理效率的具体问题上,媒体监督与公司内部治理机制表现出不同的作用和关系。这意味着要有效降低代理成本、提高代理效率,应当综合考虑中国当前的市场环境,结合企业具体存在的问题,配合使用不同的治理机制。     

外部监督、股权激励与股权代理成本

基于股权代理成本角度,采用2010年中国沪深两市发行A股的非金融类上市公司截面数据,并运用最小二乘法和logistic二元逻辑回归模型,研究了外部监督、股权激励与股权代理成本之间的关系。研究发现,股权代理成本高的公司更加倾向于寻求有效的外部监督,聘请高质量的会计师事务所;股权激励并不能起到完善公司内部治理机制的作用,反而会提高股权代理成本;股权激励会提高公司对外部审计质量的要求。     

企业债券期限结构研究——基于交易成本和代理成本视角

发行长期债券可以降低交易成本．但债券期限越长，代理成本就越高。企业在发行新债券时必须对交易成本和代理成本进行权衡．寻求最优债券期限结构。模型证明，发行企业债券时运用提前赎回条款、卖回条款、偿偾基金条款和转换权等债券契约条款可以同时达到降低发债总成本和延长企业债券融资期限的目的。     

公司治理中的代理成本问题研究综述

代理成本是公司治理要解决的基本问题,公司的内部治理结构和外部环境均会对代理成本产生影响。代理成本可以解释不同国家的融资方式和宏观经济表现,应从内、外部两方面来控制代理成本。中国国有企业问题的根本症结在于多重委托代理关系,应简化这种关系,明确权利与责任。进一步研究应考察代理成本在公司层面和宏观层面的外溢效应。     

An Agency Perspective on the Costs and Benefits of Privatization

This paper proposes a unified theoretical framework to discuss the costs and benefits of privatization using the recent advances of Incentive Theory. I begin by presenting a simple model in which the State (the principal) delegates a task (e.g., the production of a public good) to the private sector (the agent). I give and discuss conditions for the “Irrelevance Theorem” due to Sappington and Stiglitz [Sappington, D., & Stiglitz, J. (1987) Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, 6, 567–582] to hold under complete contracting. I then show how various contract incompletenesses can make either public or private ownership optimal. Finally, I provide critical assessments of these results. I thank Patrick Rey and Wilfried Zantman for useful comments on an earlier draft. The excellent comments of two referees have also improved substantially the presentation and organization of the paper. I am deeply indebted to Denis Gromb for his extremely detailed comments.     

Earnouts: The Effects of Adverse Selection and Agency Costs on Acquisition Techniques

We examine the effects of adverse selection and agency costson the structure of the consideration offered in an acquisition.Specifically we investigate factors affecting the benefits arisingfrom use of earnouts. We find that when targets have greaterprivate information, consideration is more likely to be basedon the future performance of the target. We also find an earnoutis more likely to be used in an acquisition if the target isa smaller, private company in a different industry than theacquirer. In addition, earnouts are more likely to be used whenfewer acquisitions take place within an industry and when targetsare service companies or companies with more unrecorded assets.Finally, we compare the use of earnouts with the use of stockand find that financing considerations are a more importantfactor in the use of stock.     

Incentives and Transactions Costs Within the Firm: Estimating an Agency Model Using Payroll Records

We estimate an agency model using the payroll records of a copper mine that paid a production bonus to teams of workers. We estimate the cost of incomplete information due to insurance and incentives considerations and the inefficiency caused by the simple form of the incentive contract itself. At the estimated parameters the cost of worker risk aversion (insurance) is of similar magnitude to moral hazard (incentives). Overall, incomplete information accounted for one-half of the bonus system's inefficiency relative to potential full information profits. The other half is attributed to the bonus system's inefficient generation of incentives and insurance relative to the optimal incentive contract.     

Bureaucratic Advice and Political Governance

This paper studies the conflict of interest between politicians and better-informed bureaucrats when they have differing preferences over a public project. We start with a baseline model where a bureaucrat advises a single decision maker (politician) whether to adopt a project. The bureaucrat can be punished if his misrepresentation of the project is detected. We extend this to multiple projects and multiple bureaucrats, and compare the level of Type I and Type II errors generated with centralized and decentralized decision making. This typically depends on the form of the distribution function that determines the bureaucrats' expectation of being disciplined.     

家族企业高管薪酬机制对代理成本影响的实证分析

本文利用我国338家上市家族企业2006年的数据,研究高管人员薪酬机制对上市家族企业代理成本的影响,得出以下结论:(1)高管人员薪酬机制对降低上市家族企业代理成本有显著作用;(2)高管人员家族化背景对薪酬机制效果有负向调节效应,职业经理人薪酬机制的效果比家族管理者更明显;(3)家族自利倾向对薪酬机制效果也有负向调节效应,家族自利倾向越明显,薪酬机制的效果越差。     

On the Feasibility of a Liberal Welfare State: Agency and Exit Costs in Income Security Clubs

This paper investigates whether individuals might voluntarily join and remain members of a state in which high levels of social insurance are provided. That is to say, are there plausible circumstances in which a social welfare state can be regarded as “liberal” in the sense that it has the universal support of its citizens?As a point of departure, the paper demonstrates that risk-averse individuals in a setting of substantial income or health uncertainty will voluntarily join private income-security clubs. Private income-security clubs, however, cannot be entirely voluntary because they must solve the problem of adverse selection, as with entry or exit fees. The paper demonstrates that individuals may opt for governmental provision of income security services, when there is uncertainty about the quality of private club services, because naturally high exit costs allow national governments to economically address the problem of adverse selection. The analysis also suggests that liberal income security programs may have constitutional or quasi-constitutional status because of the nature of the long-term nature of the insurance contract.     

产权、代理成本和代理效率

本文选择政府管制较少、竞争较为充分的电子电器行业作为研究对象,考察了产权制度与代理成本和代理效率的关系,得到以下结论:(1)在代理成本上,国有产权企业普遍高于混和产权企业,混和产权企业高于个人产权企业;在代理成本差异上,混和产权企业与个人产权企业的差异小于与国有产权企业的差异。(2)长期投资率和职工人数与代理成本呈显著正相关关系,而长期投资率、财务杠杆比率、职工人数等与代理效率呈显著负相关关系。(3)企业规模越大,不同产权的代理成本差异越小;反之代理成本差异越大。(4)随着市场竞争程度的提高,各类产权企业的代理成本都呈现下降趋势,其代理效率呈现提高趋势。我们研究的启示是国有企业改革的突破口应考虑如何降低其代理成本,解决的措施之一是产权改革,尤其是产权多元化的改革,其次是完善对投资和负债及冗员的监督和控制机制,以促进代理成本的降低和代理效率的提高。     

信息传递与官僚体制运行——读《叫魂》

中国的这样一种专制制度,不但是以无为作为根本原则的,而且其中有一种否定“作为”的有效机制,它总是能够相当成功地防止出现希望有所作为的英主,甚至也阻挡出现希望有所作为的能臣。     

Endogenous Specialisation and Endogenous Principal-agent Relationship

The paper develops a general equilibrium model with endogenous principal-agent relationship within a framework of consumer-producer, economies of specialisation, and transaction costs. It is shown that if transaction efficiency is low, then autarky is chosen as the general equilibrium where no market and principal-agent relationship exists. As transaction efficiency is improved, the equilibrium level of division of labour increases, comparative advantage between ex ante identical individuals emerges from the division of labour, and the number of principal-agent relationships increases. The following features of the model distinguish it from other principal-agent models in the literature. The principal-agent relationships are not only endogenous, but also reciprocal between different specialists. In a general equilibrium environment, choice between pure pricing and contingent pricing is endogenised. In the paper, the implications of endogenous transaction costs caused by moral hazard for the equilibrium extent of the market and related degrees of market integration, production concentration, trade dependence, diversity of economic structure, and productivity are explored. The model predicts two interesting phenomena: a man might work harder for the market with moral hazard than working for himself in the absence of moral hazard; a market with moral hazard might be Pareto superior to autarky with no moral hazard.