Simple measures of endogenous free-riding in protectionist lobbies

Even though there is a well-known empirical and theoretical link between lobby and the free-rider problem, the existing literature only attributes its findings to the free-rider rather than the measurement of its extent. We develop broader theoretical micro-foundations for measuring free-riding and investigate the determinants of tariff rates from the perspective of corporate lobbying and free-riding. Our estimation result shows that the degree of free-riding not only varies across industries but is particularly high in larger industries indicating the underutilization of lobbying. The tariff rates under monopoly are about 8 times higher than under perfect competition in most industries suggesting that stakeholders should maintain higher industry protection levels through lobbying.     

Learning Dynamics with Private and Public Signals

This paper studies the dynamics of learning in a model of technology adoption. Firms learn about an unknown technology by observing both private and public signals. Because of the externality associated with the public signal, the social planner has firms experiment more in the initial period of the model, relative to the market equilibrium. In certain cases, this more rapid generation of information results in the planner experimenting less in later periods of the model. In contrast, typical models with public signals result in the planner inducing more experimentation in all periods of the model relative to the market equilibrium. I would like to thank Matt Mitchell and Tom Holmes for their advice and encouragement. I would also like to thank Thor Koeppl, Cyril Monnet, John Stevens, and Jason Cummins, and two anonymous referees for their helpful comments. This paper is the second chapter of my dissertation. The views expressed herein are my own and not necessarily those of the Bureau of Economic Analysis or the US Department of Commerce.     

On Factors for Successful Strategic Alliances

The study on strategic alliance has been a hot point in academic cycle. The paper＇s subject is to make a deep analysis on the factors for the successful strategic alliances. On the basis of the study and analysis on domestic and foreign literatures, the paper abstracts three criterions to measure the success of strategic alliance and discusses the related factors which will influence the success of strategic alliance from three aspects in the selection of partner, the design on the alliance structure and the management of the alliance.     

资源价格波动性对企业创新类型的调节效应

我国企业究竟应当选择自主创新还是模仿创新,学术研究与企业实践一直存在争议。自主创新和模仿创新不是简单的对立和过渡关系,而是划分中国企业创新类别的重要维度,并由此可以推导出4种创新类型。在引入资源价格波动性作为调节变量的框架下,讨论了4种类型创新对企业绩效的影响。实证研究结果显示,当资源价格波动性较大时,企业应当选择自主创新和整合创新;而当资源价格趋于平稳时,企业则应当选择技术引进和模仿创新。     

A reconsideration of the problem of social cost: Free riders and monopolists

Summary. One version of the Coase Theorem is, If property rights are fully allocated, competition leads to efficient allocations. This version implies that the public goods problem can be solved by allocating property rights fully. We show that this mechanism is not likely to work well in economies with global externalities because the privatized economy is highly susceptible to strategic behavior: The free-rider problem manifests itself as a complementary monopoly problem in an associated private goods economy. Thus, our work relates the validity of the Coase Theorem to the literature on the incentives for strategic behavior in economies with complementarities. Received: 12 May 1999; revised version: 9 July 1999     

资源约束与地区经济收敛——基于资源稀缺性与资源配置力的考察

本文从资源稀缺性出发,提出并运用资源配置力这一新的分析工具,对2003年以来中国所面临的经济增长、资源约束与区域经济变动状况作了分析。结果表明,市场供求关系变化导致资源稀缺的结构性变迁与地域性转移,使地区资源配置力与经济竞争力发展相应变动。东部沿海能源与矿产等资源短缺地区备受资源约束递增的压力;中西部尤其是能源与矿产等资源富集地区资源配置力与经济竞争力明显递增,从而出现地区经济收敛趋势。     

Herd behaviour as an incentive scheme

Summary. We consider a set-up in which firms sequentially adopt a technology. The technology is a public good. Late movers, upon observing the early movers adopting the old technology, (partly) infer that the new technology does not exist. This hampers their incentives to innovate. Early movers anticipate this and rather exert effort to try to invent the new technology. Hence, in our model herding reduces free-rider problems and may - in the presence of switching costs - even increase efficiency.Received: 20 June 2002, Revised: 26 May 2004, JEL Classification Numbers: D83, D82, D62.I am very grateful to my thesis advisor Mathias Dewatripont for his many helpful suggestions. I thank seminar participants at ECARES, DELTA, IAE, GREMAQ and WZB. I also benefited from comments made by A.Banerjee, P.Bolton, M.Castanheira, J.Gyntelberg, P.Legros, G.Roland, M.Ruckes, X.Vives, J.Zwiebel and an anonymous referee. I gratefully acknowledge financial assistance provided by the European Commission through its TMR program (Contract number FMRX-CT98-0203) and from the Inter University Poles of Attraction Program (Contract PAI P4/28). Finally, I am also very grateful to M.Castanheira for his many encouragements at the start of my research work.     

高速公路收费对社会物流费用的影响

为厘清高速公路收费与社会物流费用的关系,文章基于发展经济学的基础理论,构建出高速公路收费、社会物流费用、社会经济发展的作用机制分析框架,得出高速公路收费制度对于优化资源配置具有正向促进作用与反向阻碍作用,体现为基于收费制度实现高速公路快速发展能够改进通行服务效率与质量,降低物流费用,扩大资源配置的市场空间,而高速公路收费作为物流费用的组成部分,会阻碍资源配置空间的扩张。正向促进作用与反向阻碍作用二者互生共存,但正向促进效果远大于反向阻碍。提出社会物流费用作为反向阻碍作用的外在表现形式,其存在具有客观必然性,调整过程是物流各环节优化作用的结果,合理水平的判断标准是现有技术与制度条件下能否最大限度满足运输需求。     

A note on work–leisure choice, human capital accumulation, and endogenous growth

The growth model of Lucas [Lucas Jr., R.E., 1988. On the mechanics of economic development. Journal of Monetary Economics 22 (1), 3–42] is enriched with people having the opportunity to optimally allocate a fraction of their time to non-productive activities (‘leisure’). It is found that the chosen amount of leisure reduces the steady-state rate of growth of per capita output. This implies that the association between income and welfare may not be as strong as it is usually assumed to be. The optimal allocation of time among activities depends on some of the parameters and the marginal product of physical capital per capita.     

管理要素的经济学内涵界定及其对内生增长理论的拓展

本文通过比较管理学范畴和经济学范畴关于管理要素内涵的已有论述,从知识性资源的角度重新界定了管理要素的内涵,并论述了管理要素在经济增长中可能存在的作用方式和特征.从管理要素是一种知识性生产资源出发,对内生的知识生产模型进行拓展.研究结果表明,企业家知识对经济增长的影响可以作为一种内生力量,一个经济体中企业家禀赋和企业家能力的高低对经济增长具有决定性作用.     

中国国有商业银行效率分析

银行业效率研究是近20年以来国际金融界和各国监管当局研究的重点课题之一.近几年国内学者对于商业银行效率测评以及规模经济和影响效率因素分析也进行了深入的研究.无论是比较银行盈利能力和资产质量,还是分析其规模效应、X-无效率,都可以看出,我国国有商业银行存在着普遍的效率低下问题,其实质就在于对于资源配置的效率低下.     

资源配置效率指标体系的构建及我国不同性质工业企业资源配置效率的比较分析

本文首先建立起资源配置效率的指标体系,然后对我国不同性质的工业企业的资源配置效率进行实证比较分析,并探寻了国有企业低效率资源配置的原因,最后对提高我国公有性资本配置效率及经济体制改革提出一些建议.     

城市规模、资源配置与经济增长

目前,部分城市的房价等资源要素价格高涨,高成本城市化已启动,本文分析了我国城市规模与资源配置的"极化"与"分散化"并存的非平衡增长城市化模式,认为非平衡增长的城市化模式造成了房价等资源要素的高涨和经济的非平衡发展,并以柯布—道格拉斯函数为基础,利用全国287个地级市1999-2008年的面板数据,检验了城市规模、资源配置对经济增长的影响,并对东中西部不同地域和不同人口规模城市和经济增长的关系进行了分类检验和分析。实证结果显示:在城市规模与经济增长之间的相关关系上,中部和西部地区明显高于东部地区。400万以上人口规模的城市,其规模与经济增长的相关系数显著降低。检验结果表明,在我国城市化模式问题上,中西部地区还可以继续进行"集中导向"的城市化模式,而东部地区的城市化到了进行"分散与集中"并存模式的转型时期。在城市规模上,未来城市化可以有重点地扩大部分中小城市的规模,再造大城市,适当控制目前超大城市的规模。在资源配置上,引导、鼓励高校教育、重点项目等资源有重点地向中小城市流入,促进城市经济的协调发展,促进城市化模式从非平衡增长到平衡增长。     

不完全信息条件下商业集群形成的问题研究

商业集群在人们生活中所起的作用日益重要,针对国外许多大型商业集群,如购物中心等通常都建立在郊区的情形,文章借助于Salop.S.C的环形市场模型,对不完全信息条件下商业集群形成的原因进行了分析,得出的结论是:在不完全信息条件下,由于运输成本的存在,消费者对欲购商品的最优搜寻是从商业集群处开始。由于商业集群的魅力所在,就导致了消费者有可能舍近求远,直接到距离较远的商店集聚区进行购物,而不是选择在距离较近的孤立商店购物。据此给出的政策性建议是:当我们在进行城市建设规划时,在交通设施比较完备的条件下,为了节约市区的稀缺资源,可以有选择的在郊区建立一些商业集群,如大型购物中心等,这样既可以有效缓解市内交通拥堵的压力,也可以有效提高资源的配置效率。     

关于建立新常态下的资信评估体系的研究

中国的资信评级业已有20多年的发展历程,资信评级机构在评级理念、评级方法、指标体系等方面取得了不同程度的进步。但就其总体而言,目前我国资信评级体系尚未形成,需求市场有限,经营规模受融资模式制约及业务单一等一系列问题。公信力及资信评级自身建设难以适应金融市场健康发展和社会信用体系建设的需要。我国资信评级存在的问题主要表现在以下几个方面：资信评级是揭示企业信用风险,有利于投资者快速、方便地得到客观、公正的信用信息,为投资者提供有效的参考信息。因此,我们应由政府牵头发展资信评级体系的建设,建立权威的资信评级机构,与国际评级机构合作,完善资信评级制度、相关法律制及公司治理结构。     

Not measuring sustainable value at all: A response to Kuosmanen and Kuosmanen

In their article in this issue of Ecological Economics, Kuosmanen and Kuosmanen [Kuosmanen, T. and Kuosmanen, N., this issue. How Not to Measure Sustainable Value (and How One Might). Ecological Economics.] aim to criticise the measurement of Sustainable Value as proposed in our previous research. By adopting a production perspective and based on a productive efficiency analysis, they claim that the proposed way of measuring Sustainable Value represents an invalid simplification that rests on restrictive and unrealistic assumptions. Our response is to show that their argument rests on a fundamental misspecification of the Sustainable Value approach. We identify three conceptual misfits: a mismatch in the perspective of the analysis, a misspecification of opportunity costs and the irrelevance of production functions. Ultimately, Kuosmanen and Kuosmanen's train of thought rests entirely within the realm of productive efficiency analysis, whereas Sustainable Value builds on the foundations of financial economics and consequently adopts a macro rather than a firm perspective. It is thus not surprising that the findings of Kuosmanen and Kuosmanen appear to contradict the Sustainable Value approach. However, this is due to their fundamental misspecification of the Sustainable Value approach. As a result, rather than providing novel insights into how Sustainable Value might be measured in a better way, they do not measure Sustainable Value at all.