Managerial Incentives for Takeovers

The paper studies managerial incentives in a model where managers choose product market strategies and make takeover decisions. The equilibrium contract includes an incentive to increase the firm's sales, under either quantity or price Competition. This result contrasts with previous findings in the literature, and hinges on the fact that when managers are more aggressive, rival firms earn lower profits and thus are willing to sell out at a lower price. However, as a side effect of such a contract, the manager might undertake unprofitable takeovers.     

The Determinants and Consequences of Abandoned Takeovers

Takeover activity has attracted a great deal of academic attention over the past three decades. Much of this interest has focused on the study of completed takeovers with a particular interest in seeking to understand the impact of takeover activity on the wealth of both shareholders in acquired and bidding firms. Unlike their completed counterparts, abandoned takeovers have received relatively little academic attention. This is surprising since a significant proportion of takeover bids are unsuccessful. This paper seeks to address the imbalance by providing a comprehensive survey of the takeover failure literature. The paper focuses on two aspects of the literature: First, we discuss and review the factors likely to influence takeover outcome. Second, we examine the consequences of takeover abandonment from the perspective of targets and bidders. We also identify a number of areas where future research may seek to improve further our understanding of the causes and consequences of takeover abandonment.     

Wage curve, unemployment duration and compensating differentials

In this study unemployment effects on individual pay are investigated following the study on ‘wage curves’ by Blanchflower and Oswald (1990). In bargaining models, higher unemployment should lower wage pressure; due to compensating wage differential arguments, on the other hand, workers who take jobs with higher layoff risks should be rewarded. In a cross-sectional study on Austrian data, a negative wage curve is confirmed. Contrary to the results by Blanchflower and Oswald no U-shape is found, also long-term unemployment seems to be important. No conclusive evidence of compensating differentials has been determined.     

不完全契约的成因、风险及其应对机制

不完全契约和资产专用性引致了交易中的敲竹杠问题,并带来生产成本和交易成本的上升。本文通过研究不完全契约的成因以及引发的风险——敲竹杠行为,提出了三个方面的应对机制,在此基础上分析了不完全契约理论在企业人力资本管理和企业组织模式选择中的应用。     

效率工资、效率工资增长模型

本文首先介绍了效率工资的经典模型——夏皮罗一斯蒂格里兹模型,探讨了效率工资的形成以及非自愿失业出现的原因,及失业的“威胁”作用。另外,本文在符合效率工资模型的基本假定条件下,融合代理理论和强制性储蓄假说,构建了效率工资增长模型,提出了效率工资增长模型的关键等式,且由等式隐含地决定了效率工资的最优增长率。此外,还分别分析了效率工资的最优增长率与贴现率、厂商生产技术和工人偏好之间的关系。最后,探讨了最优就业路径和调整成本问题等等。     

Bankruptcy and steel plant shutdowns

The bankruptcies resulting from the American steel industry downturn in the period, 1999–2002, raise the question of whether the bankruptcy process itself led to permanent plant shutdowns and job losses. With information on 110 of the steel plants operating in the United States in 1994, this paper develops empirical models of steel plant closure and firm bankruptcy to see if the latter impacts on the former. Based on survival models, the results provide support for the hypothesis that the bankruptcy of steel companies could have led to viable steel plants closing, and thus, the bankruptcies in themselves may have caused permanent inefficient employment loss.     

Wage bargaining,productivity growth and long-run industry structure

This paper studies the innovation dynamics of an oligopolistic industry. The firms compete not only in the output market but also by engaging in productivity enhancing innovations to reduce labor costs. Rent sharing may generate productivity dependent wage differentials. Productivity growth creates intertemporal spillover effects, which affect the incentives for innovation at subsequent dates. Over time the industry equilibrium approaches a steady state. The paper characterizes the evolution of the industry's innovation behavior and its market structure on the adjustment path.     

Monopoly, Monopsony, and Union Strength and Local Market Wage Differentials

A bstract . The study of the influence of product market monopoly, local labor market monopsony , and union strength on market wage differentials is the purpose of this paper. Accordingly, the related theoretical propositions are examined, synthesized and extended to explain more fully observed variations in local labor market wages. In contrast to previous investigations, this study considers several varied occupations at once, encompasses nineteen different two digit SIC industries , and computes market wage data using observations on individuals from the 1970 census. The results indicate that the extent of unionism and employer monopsony contribute significantly to the explanation of market wage differentials, while the product market concentration , and its interaction with unionism does not.     

银行监督、企业社会性成本与贷款融资体系

本文从政府机构控股国有企业所造成的企业行为扭曲的角度来研究银行贷款策略组合的微观机制,即银行对国有企业和私营企业进行事前筛选的程度及贷款利率设定,并建立了关于银行贷款融资体系的微观模型和理论框架。首先,将企业社会性成本和银行监督功能(事前筛选)引入债务合同模型,说明国有企业在面临破产做清算决策时会考虑到社会破产成本,从而推导出国有企业的还款机制有别于私营企业,信息不对称条件下银行事前对贷款筛选的激励也会有所不同,并提供了一般性推导和数值解拟合分析;同时,事前筛选存在一定的反转效应,因此需要就监督效率的社会剩余价值进行权衡。     

Contracts and on-the-job search

The paper studies a matching model with on-the-job search, transferable utility and heterogeneous agents. Matched agents can set the conditions under which a given match can be dissolved. It is shown that matched agents use sign-off fees to extract all capital gains from trade when a third agent is contacted. In equilibrium, this redistributes wealth towards less able individuals, reduces the likelihood that any given match will be rejected and, given the conditions, it yields efficiency. Although externalities arise when a match is formed and when turnover occurs, the decentralized outcome is efficient when the production function is sub-modular and the difference in abilities is big enough. The results obtained may provide theoretical support for the type of contracts used in some markets, such as sports markets.     

Minimum Wage Myths

This paper casts doubt on the positive effects so often claimed for the recently-introduced national minimum wage by its many supporters. It attacks the notion of the minimum wage as a 'free lunch', arguing that its effects are often either negative or simply unknown. Those worst affected by its introduction are those the Minimum Wage most aims to help – the lowest income group.     

Wage Spillovers,Inter-regional Effects and the Impact of Inward Investment

Abstract

This paper evaluates the extent of inter-industry and inter-regional wage spillovers across the UK. An extensive body of literature exists suggesting that wages elsewhere affect wage determination and levels of satisfaction, but this paper extends the analysis of wage determination to examine the effects of inward investment in the process. Thus far the specific effect of foreign wages on domestic wage determination has not been evaluated. We employ industry- and regional-level panel data for the UK, and contrast results from alternative approaches to space-time modelling. Each supports the notion that such wage spillovers do occur, though assumptions made concerning the modelling of spatial interaction are important. Further, such wage spillovers are more widespread for skilled than for unskilled workers and also lower in areas of high unemployment.     

Wage inequality, technology and trade: 21st century evidence

This paper describes and explains some of the principal trends in the wage and skill distribution in recent decades. Increases in wage inequality started in the US and UK at the end of the 1970s, but are now widespread. A good fraction of this inequality trend is due to technology-related increases in the demand for skilled workers outstripping the growth of their supply. Since the early 1990s, labor markets have become more polarized with jobs in the middle third of the wage distribution shrinking and those in the bottom and top third rising. I argue that this is because computerization complements the most skilled tasks, but substitutes for routine tasks performed by middle wage occupations such as clerks, leaving the demand for the lowest skilled service tasks largely unaffected. Finally, I argue that technology is partly endogenous, for example it has been spurred by trade with China. Thus, trade does matter for changes in the labor market, but through a different mechanism than conventionally thought.     

绩效标准差异、声誉异质性与激励契约设计

文章在委托代理框架下分析了激励契约中的绩效标准选择,得出了文章的核心观点即绩效标准差异导致声誉异质性,影响了激励机制的发挥。然后文章运用绩效标准模型的结论对中国大学教师绩效衡量标准差异性进行了探讨,并且针对其中存在的问题提出了相应的政策建议。     

Wage differentials in the presence of unobserved worker,firm, and match heterogeneity

We consider the problem of estimating and decomposing wage differentials in the presence of unobserved worker, firm, and match heterogeneity. Controlling for these unobservables corrects omitted variable bias in previous studies. It also allows us to measure the contribution of unmeasured characteristics of workers, firms, and worker-firm matches to observed wage differentials. An application to linked employer-employee data shows that decompositions of inter-industry earnings differentials and the male-female differential are misleading when unobserved heterogeneity is ignored.     

组织缺失、不完全市场与农地合约

由于农村集体经济组织的缺失,我国的土地市场不是完全竞争的,农村土地流转合约表现为农户、地方政府与土地开发商三者之间的"个性特征的竞争",即人们更多地利用关系、权力、地位、金钱或者别的什么来竞争"土地租金"。只有建立符合集体经济利益的合作经济组织,并使之成为独立的预算中心和利润中心,弥补缺失的集体产权主体,取消地方政府在土地交易市场上的垄断权力,才能真正实现土地的流转价值,保证失地农民的正当利益。     

Pricing of Forward and Futures Contracts

There has long been substantial interest in understanding the relative pricing of forward and futures contracts. This has led to the development of two standard theories of forward and futures pricing, namely, the Cost-of-Carry and the Risk Premium (or Unbiased Expectations) hypotheses. These studies have modelled the relationship between spot and forward/futures prices either through a no-arbitrage condition or a general equilibrium setting. Relatively few studies in this area have considered the impact of stochastic trends in the data. With the emergence of non-stationarity and cointegration in recent years, more sophisticated models of futures/forward prices have been specified. This paper surveys the significant contributions made to the literature on the pricing of forward/futures contracts, and examines recent empirical studies pertaining to the estimation and testing of univariate and systems models of futures pricing.     

《破产法》定调准确

既然是“破产制度”,应该建立在“产权制度”之后,“破产”应该破的本为产权,而相关《物权法》也是有待建设中的状态。另外涉及到国有企业,产权都是国家所有,破产破给谁呢?     

Regulation, Unionization, and Racial Wage Discrimination: An Analysis of the Trucking Industry

A bstract . This article tests the hypothesis that increased product market competition of deregulation decreased employer and union wage discrimination in the motor carrier industry. Specifically, in each regulatory period, we estimate the portion of the industry racial wage differential that is due to racial differences: in driver attributes, returns to attributes, and unionization. Our findings suggest that enhanced product market competition directly reduces wage discrimination and may have a smaller indirect effect of further reducing racial wage disparities in industries with racially exclusive unions. These findings support the use of competition to reduce wage discrimination as opposed to government intervention.