管制合同的法经济学研究与搁置成本处置——以电力行业为例

公共事业市场化改革从法经济学的视角是公共事业管制者对原有管制合同的违约,其违约行为对在位公共事业企业造成的违约损害即搁置成本,而建立在效率基础上的搁置成本的补偿则是管制合同违约的损害救济,这一逻辑是搁置成本所引发的全部法经济学问题的核心.文章对中国电力市场改革中管制者与公共事业企业的关系进行法经济学的分析,并指出对于长期缺乏法律约束的中国公共事业管制者而言,合理的搁置成本处置将会约束管制者本身,并避免无约束的管制乱用.     

Did Open Access Integrate Natural Gas Markets? An Arbitrage Cost Approach

Several studies, using analyses that measure the correlation between prices in various markets, have argued that deregulation of natural gas pipeline contracts has reduced the transaction costs between natural gas markets. Correlations approaches, however, have potentially serious problems. Given these problems, this article estimates transactions costs directly. Deregulation is found to have lowered transactions costs to and from the Louisiana, Oklahoma, and Texas regions, but increased transactions costs from the Rocky Mountain area. Deregulation of pipeline contracts, by lowering the cost of using the market and therefore increasing demand for pipeline capacity, may therefore have differential impacts upon transactions costs between markets. This study implies that the transactions cost approach may be able to overcome several difficulties inherent in the correlations approach.     

Double Moral Hazard,Monitoring, and the Nature of Contracts

generalized double-sided moral-hazard model, with risk-averse parties who mutually monitor each other (to get a reasonable idea of outcome/effort). The model considers trade-off between monitoring costs and moral hazard costs, which are endogenously determined by the extent of monitoring. Using this model, we formally prove a generalized version of Coase's conjecture – that the optimal contract minimizes the agency and risk costs. We then show how varying assumptions about the feasibility or cost of monitoring of the outcome or the worker's effort lead to different contracts being optimal. The analysis is then used to explain the nature of contracts observed in practice under many different situations. We will give an explanation as to why industrial workers typically work under wage contracts, while share contracts are common in agriculture and will explain why profit sharing is more common for senior managers than for the production workers. Received September 19, 2000; revised version received October 30, 1997     

美国煤电合约特点及对我国的启示

从交易成本经济学的角度来看,煤炭产业和电力产业适合选择长期合约的合作方式。以美国煤电合约为研究对象,分析在20世纪80年代后美国煤电合约期限缩短(即由原来长期合约为主变为5年期以下的合约占主导)的原因。从以下三个方面对此现象做出解释:能源市场波动削弱了煤炭企业的谈判势力;电力市场放松管制增强了电力企业的谈判势力;其他政策法规产生约束作用。最后结合我国煤电合约现状,借鉴美国构建稳定煤电关系的经验,为缓和我国煤电矛盾提出如下建议:加快实现竞价上网,放松发电企业管制;完善合约条款设置;转变政府参与角色。     

Additionality When REDD Contracts Must be Self-Enforcing

This paper examines self-enforcing contracts as a financial mechanism for reducing carbon emissions from deforestation and forest degradation when the opportunity cost of the land (i.e., landholder type) is private information and is imperfectly correlated over time (i.e., partially persistent types). Because self-enforcement limits the feasible incentives, the conservation levels are constrained by the surplus created. Regardless of the degree of persistence of such opportunity costs across contracting periods, a first-best self-enforcing contract can deliver “additional” carbon sequestration beyond the business as usual scenario only if the value of forest conservation is sufficiently high. Otherwise, self-enforcing contracts can induce some, suboptimal level of carbon sequestration. The degree of persistence of opportunity costs across periods does not affect the amount of total payments provided in the optimal menu of contracts, but greater persistence of opportunity cost types leads to contracts that feature more of the total payment as a bonus in contracts for landholders with a high opportunity cost for their land and more of the total payment as an upfront fixed payment for landholders with a low opportunity cost.     

Optimal depreciation,payments to capital,and natural monopoly regulation

This paper examines optimal recovery of capital costs by the profit- maximizing firm operating under a rate-of-return constraint and for the regulator's problem of welfare maximization such that revenues are sufficient to cover economic costs. In this regard, we examine optimal depreciation schedules and time horizons for recovery, as well as the effects of stationary and nonstationary demand and cost conditions and a profit tax on the recovery paths. For the regulated firm seeking profits, once recovery begins, it continues at the most rapid rate until full recovery of costs occurs. In terms of the welfare objective, the regulator is required to commit to full recovery over a finite time period. For both the profit and welfare objectives, the optimal recovery requires backloading under a broad set of conditions (recovery increases through time, a practice that is contrary to extant rules).     

The Effects of Employment Insecurity on Demand,Productivity and Employment Levels

This paper investigates the effects of labour market deregulation on demand, productivity and employment levels in the short term. The focus will be on deregulation of labour contracts, i.e. on the transition from a legal system that guarantees permanent employment to a system of formal rules allowing for job insecurity. The idea is that the greater the deregulation of labour contracts, the higher the productivity and the lower the demand and employment levels.     

Optimal Conservation Programs, Asymmetric Information and the Role of Fixed Costs

An increasing number of environmental protection programs offers financial compensation to farmers in exchange for conservation services. Incentive-compatible contracts can be designed to mitigate excess compensation, but the extant literature suggests that outcomes are always second-best so that other instruments (such as conservation auctions) may be preferred. We argue that the claim regarding the first-best solution never being incentive-compatible is correct if all conservation costs are variable in nature; if there are fixed costs too, the first-best compensation scheme may be incentive-compatible after all. Given the relevance of fixed costs in conservation issues, we conclude that incentive-compatible contracts should be given a second chance as a policy measure to induce conservation.     

A transaction cost model of contract choice: The case of petroleum exploration

The growing literature on transaction costs posits that the structures of contracts involving exchange under uncertainty are influenced by the costs incurred by the contracting parties prior to, as well as after, a contract is signed. This research investigates the contractual responses to the substantial uncertainty attending the exchange of rights to underground petroleum deposits. It develops a transaction cost model to explain the payment structure found in these contracts. The model identifies the major transaction costs associated with the payment types used in oil and gas exploration contracts, including ex ante measurement costs and ex post production inefficiencies, and explains their effect on contract structure. Testable implications concerning variations in the payment structure of petroleum exploration contracts are generated and tested using data from private oil and gas mineral rights leasing contracts in four western states. The study has direct public policy significance in that it delineates the implications of different payment structures of oil and gas leasing contracts. These implications can be used to evaluate proposals to reform federal oil and gas leasing policies. In addition, while there has been considerable analysis of federal offshore oil and gas leasing contracts, there has been a dearth of research on private onshore oil leasing practices. This study helps to fill this empirical void.     

ECONOMIC EFFICIENCY AND "PRUDENCE" ANALYSIS OF POWER PLANT INVESTMENT

The various deregulation proposals for the electric utility sector rely on market forces to provide incentives. Even within the traditional regulatory framework, using market behavior instead of regulators' views as a criterion for regulatory decisions is part of the spectrum of deregulation proposals. This paper proposes such an implicit deregulation of rate base decisions. It presents an efficiency standard with which public utility commissions (PUCs) should conduct their "prudence" analyses of power plant construction costs. Prudence reviews, as typically conducted by PUCs, are likely to change the risk structure in regulated sectors so as to make both ratepayers and shareholders worse off. Moreover, the correct perspective for such analyses is ex ante rather than ex post. This means that the expected costs and benefits of alternative actions are the correct parameters for evaluating prudence, and that the interests of ratepayers are consistent only with this economic efficiency approach to prudence analysis. Average industry behavior is the correct standard for implementing the efficient prudence criterion. This paper describes an alternative procedure that PUCs can use to conduct prudence reviews correctly.     

基于企业生命周期的高管 激励契约最优动态配置* ——价值分配的视角

本文基于生命周期和委托代理理论，在价值分配视角下，阐释了生命周期演进过程中高管效用敏感性变化规律以及不同高管激励机制运行特征，构建了高管激励契约最优动态配置方案，并利用中国高科技上市公司2010-2013年的面板数据，对高管激励契约体系对企业价值分配的影响进行了实证检验。研究结果表明，在企业成长期和蜕变期，高管薪酬激励能够有效抑制代理成本；而高管声誉激励机制仅在企业成熟期表现出对代理成本的抑制效应；生命周期各阶段内，控制权激励均未发挥显著的治理作用，相反在蜕变期，控制权沦为高管挖掘私人利益的工具。因此，改善薪酬激励期限结构，提升声誉激励和高管市场约束的持续性，构建高管控制权管理制度体系是实现高管激励契约最优动态配置的必经之路。     

Cost Savings and Productivity in the Railroad Industry

Railroad deregulation has had tremendous effects on the level of costs and productivity gains. I use an unbalanced panel of railroads from 1978 through 1989 to estimate a translog cost function. I find that initially cost savings from partial deregulation were modest. However, by 1989, I find that cost savings were tremendous, with costs being up to 40 percent lower than they would have been under regulation. I also find that while initial effects of deregulation on productivity gains were large, these effects have fallen through time, and currently are comparable to pre-deregulation levels.     

How to allocate forward contracts: The case of electricity markets

Several regulatory authorities worldwide have imposed forward contract commitments on electricity producers as a way to mitigate their market power. In this paper we analyze the impact of such commitments on equilibrium outcomes in a model that reflects important institutional and structural features of electricity markets. We show that, when firms are asymmetric, the distribution of contracts among firms matters. In the case of a single dominant firm, the regulator can be confident that allocating contracts to that firm will be pro-competitive. However, when asymmetries are less extreme, certain contract allocations might yield anti-competitive outcomes by eliminating more competitive equilibria. Our analysis thus suggests that forward contracts should be allocated so as to (virtually) reduce asymmetries across firms.     

Determinants of adaptation costs in procurement: an empirical estimation on Italian public works contracts

It is widely agreed that rules governing public procurement should be designed to achieve value for money. However, in the public works sector, ‘…?the good being procured is usually complex and hard to be exactly specified ex ante, …?[and] alterations to the original project might be needed after the contract is awarded. This may result in considerable discrepancies between the lowest winning bid and the actual costs that are incurred by the buyer’ (Bajari et al., 2006). There is now a wide body of literature focusing on cost escalation during the execution of contracts and their estimates reveal that it can be often quite large. This article is aimed at offering an empirical test of the determinants of adaptation costs in the public works procurement. Using a detailed data set on Italian public works contracts, we run an empirical analysis, grounded on the main conclusions reached in the literature, to test for the main drivers of adaptation costs.     

Forced Freebies: A Note on Partial Deregulation with Pro Bono Supply Requirements

The liberalization of many former state governed natural monopolies in sectors such as electricity, railroad and telecommunications is done by partial deregulation. Typically, entry is invited into elements of the production chain, yet under strict price and quality controls. This note considers some potential welfare effects of an unconventional type of conditional deregulation, used in the electricity market in Flanders, Belgium, where the utility companies are held to deliver the households they supply a complimentary basic electricity package free of charge. It is shown that, while decreasing the number of new entrants into the liberalized market, such pro bono supply requirements can nevertheless increase net total production. A general condition for a welfare maximizing level of forced freebies is derived.     

A long-run cost allocation problem in the political economy of electric utility power pools

Summary and Conclusions Discussants of the electric power industry point to three principal reasons for corporately unaffiliated electric utility companies to establish formal interorganizational relations: optimal short-run dispatching of production facilities, the scale economies (more precisely, the subadditivity) of long-run costs, and the advantage of pooling the risk of equipment failure. This paper has analyzed the organizational properties of power pools established to realize the advantages of subadditive long-run costs. A formal organizational model of a power pool was presented, recognizing the economic and normative structure of a pool. The normative structure chosen was the subsidy freedom equity concept familiar in the literature on natural monopoly and in game theory. The principal result of the paper is the construction of a subsidy-free cost allocation rule for the deterministic multiple-technology long-run system planning problem.The applicability of this result depends on the organization of the power pool as an entity capable of contracting for the power needed by the members. Conspicuously in the model used here, the optimal poolwide cost is allocated but ownership of the generating plants is not.In power ppols of independently owned utilities (IOUs), capacity planning may be centralized but, with the exception of joint ventures in individual generating plants, ownership is maintained at the level of the member firms. IOU power pools allocate separately the fixed and variable costs of the system. Pool members often take turns in building new plants for the pool, thereby indirectly allocating system capacity costs. Having identifiable ownership in the generating plants, the members can allocate the energy costs of the system in a subsidy-free manner using the short-run marginal cost of energy established by central dispatching or energy brokering (Herriot 1985). But that is an approach to short-run energy charges which is very differet from the energy charge in the peaker rule studied here, and it may result in an allocation of total costs that is not subsidy-free.There are partnership among rural electric distribution cooperatives, called generation and transmission (G&T) co-ops, which do share costs without allocating ownership interests. G&T co-ops build generating plants or secure power contracts from IOUs sufficient to meet their members' requirements at an agreed level of reliability. Ownership of the plants, and liability for the contracts, is not disaggregated. Yet in most cases the G&T co-op does not sell power to non-members, so all costs must be allocated among the member firms.The ownership structure presumed here could also obtain under the scenarios for electric power deregulation envisioned by Joskow and Schmalensee (1983). If the distribution segment is disaggregated from generation and transmission, then locally franchised distribution firms mist face in common the subadditive long-run cost function discussed in the second section. The regional bulk power market would therefore have the structure of a natural monopsony, so the distribution firms would have an incentive to pool their forecast loads and collectively negotiate long-term power contracts with the independent generating firms. Ownership of generation would rest with the generation firms, but the cost of the regionally optimal portfolio of power contracts would have to be allocated among the pooled distribution firmsThe deterministic system planning model used here is somewhat simplistic, certainly as must any model to be admit a closed-form solution in a contexts where the real capacity planning problems are solved using very large scale linear programs and simulation. However, the cost allocation rule derived for this model may be useful guidepost for the development of practical cost-sharing rules in power pools. An important implication of the peaker rule (4) is the equity of not attempting to allocate separately the fixed and variable costs of a system. Though adjustments must be made to the peaker rule to account fully for the uncertainties, indivisibilities, unreliabilities, and nonhomogeneities faced by system planners, as well as for the growth of future loads and the development of new generation technologies, this cost-allocation rule appears to be helpful as a starting point in power pool rate design.     

The shading and distancing of commerce: When internalization is not enough

A political economy of degradation and of sustainability should account not only for the full range of production costs but the sources of those costs. It should consider how the pursuit of wealth can, deliberately or not, lead to uncounted costs and unaccountable actors. This article explores the conditions of cost generation and externalization, especially those that are largely unintended and inadvertent. It shows how the pursuit of wealth, the expansion of markets, the mobility of capital, and the entanglements of production processes can lead to the unwitting generation and displacement of costs. It analyzes competitive business strategy and patterns of production and consumption for their contribution to such costs. Business strategy and state policy tend to create a never-ending search for frontiers, however simulated and however unecological they may be. The costs generated in those frontiers are a function of shading, that is, obscuring of costs, and distancing, the separation of production and consumption decisions, both of which impede ecological and social feedback and create cognitive, institutional, and ethical lags between initial benefits and eventual full costs. As distance increases along dimensions of geography, culture, bargaining power, or agency, negative feedback loops are severed, stakeholders expand while decision making contracts, environmental problems are displaced, and shading and cost externalization increase. The likelihood of sustainable resource use increases as distance is lowered, as institutions locate decision authority in those who receive negative ecological feedback and who have the capacity and incentives to act on that feedback, and as the burden of proof for economic interventions shifts to the interveners.     

Costs under Regulation and Deregulation: The Case of US Passenger Airlines*

Privatization, the removal of regulatory control and similar changes in property rights within firms can be expected to shift cost functions downward and permit increased output, lower final service prices and more efficient resource allocation The US Airline Deregulation Act of 1978 was clearly expected to have these effects. This paper investigates whether the widely anticipated reduction in costs following the Airline Deregulation Act of 1978 actually occurred. We utilize an empirical procedure that explicitly takes the multi-product characteristics into account and identifies the various sources of changes in costs. The change in airline's costs are decomposed into components and separately measured to identify the effects attributable to deregulation A number of other countries are now considering important changes in the public ownership and control of their airline industries and a quantitative assessment of the actual effect of US deregulation on costs may be thought of as providing lower bound estimates of what might be expected in other countries.     

Technological Change Bias In The U.S. Investor-Owned Electric Utility Industry Following Potential Deregulation

This paper estimates regulated and poientially deregulated costs of production for a multiproduct electric utility industry. The empirical evidence suggests technological regression with respect to costs in both regulated and deregulated environments. Analysis of factor cost shares indicates that technological change in a deregulated environment is expected to be less apital saving than technological change in the regulated environment. In addition, this study finds that overall diseconomies of scale may be nduced over time and to a greater extentunder deregulation than under regulation. Also, cost complementarities may be enhancedover time, but to a lesser extent under deregulation. Hence. tendencies toward natural monop oly may be increased or decreased by deregulation, and advancing deregulation may or may not be an appropriate policy.