A Simple Model of Inefficient Institutions

This paper develops a simple model of economic and political institutions that lead to poor aggregate economic performance. In the model economy, groups with political power, the elite, choose policies to increase their income and to directly or indirectly transfer resources from the rest of society to themselves. The resulting equilibrium is generally inefficient because of three distinct mechanisms: (1) revenue extraction, (2) factor price manipulation and (3) political consolidation. In particular, the elite may pursue inefficient policies to extract revenue from other groups. They may do so to reduce the demand for factors coming from other groups in the economy, thus indirectly benefiting from changes in factor prices. Finally, they may try to impoverish other groups competing for political power. The elite's preferences over inefficient policies translate into inefficient economic institutions. The notable exception to this general picture emerges when long‐term investments are important, thus creating a commitment (holdup) problem, whereby equilibrium taxes and regulations are worse than the elite would like them to be from an ex ante point of view. In this case, economic institutions that provide additional security of property rights to other groups can be useful.     

Verifiability and Contract Enforcement: A Model with Judicial Moral Hazard

I model the litigation of a contract containing a variable notobservable by courts, hence nonverifiable, unless the rationaland self-interested judge exerts effort. He values the correctruling but dislikes effort. Judicial effort is discretionary.I show that effort cost is inconsequential—"always breach"is equilibrium for any effort cost. But there exists anotherequilibrium where a small breach rate is achieved even withsignificant effort costs. Maximal remedies for breach are notoptimal. Because effort is discretionary, low effort cost increasesbreach. Pretrial negotiations can have a substantial negativeimpact on verifiability under arbitrarily small deviations fromfull rationality.     

政治关联与企业的契约实施环境

本文基于世界银行2003年和2005年的调查数据,对不同所有制企业的契约实施环境进行了比较。研究发现,民营企业的契约实施环境显著差于其他所有制类型的企业。在此基础上,我们进一步考察了政治关联对企业契约实施环境的影响。实证结果表明:(1)与掌握实权的政府官员建立政治联系能够改善民营企业的契约实施环境,而且这些官员的地位越高,其影响越显著;(2)政治关联是否能够改善企业的契约实施环境与官员的类型有关,如果官员属于"帮助企业发展"类型的,则与此类官员的政治关联能够改善企业在本省和外省的契约实施环境;(3)董事会中有政府官员以及总经理是由政府任命不利于企业契约的实施环境的改善;(4)随着法律制度的不断完善和市场化进程的推进,各类政治关联对企业契约实施环境的积极作用正在被其消极作用所抵消。因此,消除阻碍民营企业发展的各种制度和政策障碍仍然是推动民营企业发展的根本之道。     

Foreign Direct Investment and Contract Enforcement

A long-standing deterrent to foreign direct investment in developing countries is weak enforcement of binding contracts. A local firm may learn business skills from a cooperating multinational firm and subsequently do business on its own based on the acquired skills. In a two-period, double-moral-hazard model, non-binding contracts are shown to be preferred by all parties, implying that contract enforcement is unnecessary. Our results shed light on the puzzling phenomenon that substantial FDI has been carried out under contractual arrangements in developing countries in which contract enforcement is problematic. They can also explain some interesting stylized facts on contractual joint ventures between multinationals and local firms in the early stage of an economic transition.J. Comp. Econom.,December 1998, 26(4), pp. 761–782. School of Business, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong; and Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Clear Water Bay, Hong Kong.     

Dynamic Contractual Enforcement: A Model of Strikes

This paper provides a theory of strikes as part of a constrained efficient enforcement mechanism for an implicit contractual agreement. A firm possessing contemporaneously private information about demand engages in an enduring relationship with its workforce. If the information becomes perfectly observable subsequently, then, modulo discounting, the first-best is implementable, but strikes are always off the equilibrium path. If the observations of the workforce are imperfect strikes occur in equilibrium. The dynamic contracting problem is modeled as a repeated game with imperfect monitoring. The equilibrium exhibits production inefficiency and incomplete insurance to mitigate the inefficiencies caused by strikes.     

正式契约的第三方实施与权力最优化--对农民工工资纠纷的契约论解释

本文运用契约理论解释农民工工资纠纷的成因 ,提出以下主要观点 :首先 ,农民工工资被拖欠的主要原因并非农民工与直接“关系”雇主之间的非正式口头契约无法有效实施 ,而恰是国家明文规定的、应该由国家作为第三方强制实施的正式契约无法有效实施 ;其次 ,国家作为强制实施的第三方 ,无法有效保护农民的合法权益 ,原因在于一方面国家拥有的部分绝对权力在追求租金最大化的动机下被滥用 ;另一方面 ,作为国家强制实施的直接工具的司法体系的相对权力又被强势利益群体所削弱 ,无法有效进行强制 ;再次 ,国家作为第三方在保护农民工合法权益方面的失效 ,导致农民工选择契约的其他执行方法 ,使得契约的实施由“公共强制”倒退回“私人秩序” ,进而可能导致私人暴力的无序使用 ,危及社会稳定 ,反过来又迫使政府只能选择更大力度地实际使用权力 ;最后 ,国家要重新建立国家作为强制实施第三方在保护农民工权益中的权威 ,就必须考虑“第三方权力的最优化”问题     

金融契约执行效率、企业进入与产品市场竞争

供给侧改革的核心之一是引导企业有序进入新行业,金融契约执行效率的高低会影响企业外部融资成本和进入决策,进而决定市场竞争程度。本文将不完全契约机制和古诺竞争引入动态一般均衡框架,从理论上阐释了金融契约执行效率对企业进入和市场竞争的影响机制。此外,本文使用1998—2007年中国制造业企业的微观数据对理论结果进行了实证检验,回归结果表明:金融契约执行效率越高的地区,企业进入激励越强、市场竞争越充分;从地区角度看,中部地区对金融契约执行效率的变动相对敏感;从行业角度看,技术密集型行业对金融契约执行效率的变动相对不敏感。     

A Simple Two-Sector Model of Outsourcing

Outsourcing has become an increasingly contentious subject ever since N. Gregory Mankiw remarked in 2004 that outsourcing is just another way of doing international trade, and must be beneficial to the nation, including the workers. We construct a simple two-sector specific-factor model and explore the validity of Mankiw's remarks. We find his ideas are valid when the country does not produce any outsourced factor's work at home in that both the laborers and the nation benefit. But when some outsourced factor cum intermediate good is also produced at home, the nation still benefits but the workers may suffer.     

Legal Reform,Contract Enforcement and Firm Size in Mexico

The variation in legal system quality across states in Mexico is used to examine the relationship between judicial quality and firm size over the course of the 2000s, when systemic changes were taking place. Using economic census microdata and survey‐based measures of legal institutions, a robust effect of judicial quality is observed on the firm size distribution and efficiency, instrumenting for underlying historical determinants of institutions. Indicative evidence is found that the effect is strongest in more capital‐intensive industries. Market size and distance‐to‐market are also found to matter for firm size outcomes, consistent with the new trade literature.     

The Simple Analytics of the Principal-Agent Incentive Contract

Going beyond previous studies of the effectiveness of high school economics courses, Saunders reports on his research findings which suggest that “as one moves from the Recogrtition and Understanding questions … through the Simple Application questions to the Complex Application questions, the differences in favor of those with high school economics become smaller….” The implications of these results for the introductory college course are discussed, with some specific suggestions for the course's content and orientation.     

A Simple Model of Health Insurance Competition

This study investigates competition between health insurance companies under different financing regulations. We consider two alternatives advanced in recent German healthcare reform discussions: competition by contribution rates (health contributions) and by fees (health premia). We find that contribution rate competition yields lower company profits and higher consumer welfare than premia competition when switching between insurance companies is costly.     

契约密集型货币:契约实施、产权和经济绩效

本文引入了一个客观地度量契约实施及产权安全性的指标,即"契约密集型货币(contract-intensive money)",或简称为CIM.它建立在人们选择以何种方式持有金融资产的决策基础之上.不同国家的案例研究表明,作为对政治事件的反映,CIM按照本文预测的方式随时变化.研究还表明,CIM和一国的投资额、经济增长率及依赖契约部门的相对规模存在正相关关系.     

A Model of a Price-setting Duopoly with a Wage-rise Contract

This paper considers a wage-rise contract between a firm and its employees as the firm's strategy, and suggests a wage-rise-contract policy. The policy is a promise by the firm that it will announce a certain output level and a wage premium rate, and if it actually produces more than the announced output level, then it will pay each employee a wage premium uniformly. First, this paper examines the case in which one of two firms unilaterally offers the wage-rise-contract policy by using a two-stage price-setting duopoly model. It is then shown that there exists an equilibrium which coincides with the Stackelberg solution where the firm adopting the policy is the leader. Next, this paper examines the case in which both firms can offer the wage-rise-contract policy in the model. It is then shown that there exists an equilibrium which is more profitable for both firms than in the unilateral case.     

Contract-Intensive Money: Contract Enforcement, Property Rights, and Economic Performance

We introduce a new, easily accessed and objective measure of the enforceability of contracts and the security of property rights. This measure, called contract-intensive money or CIM, is based on citizens decisions regarding the form in which they choose to hold their financial assets. Country case studies show that CIM varies over time in response to political events in ways predicted by our arguments. We also show that CIM is positively related to investment and growth rates, and to the relative size of contract-dependent sectors of the economy.     

Firm Heterogeneity,Contract Enforcement,and the Industry Dynamics of Offshoring*

We develop an endogenous growth model with R&D spillovers to study the long‐run consequences of offshoring with firm heterogeneity and incomplete contracts. In so doing, we model offshoring as the geographical fragmentation of a firm's production chain between a home upstream division and a foreign downstream division. While there is always a positive correlation between upstream bargaining weight and offshoring activities, there is an inverted U‐shaped relationship between these and growth. Whether offshoring with incomplete contracts also increases consumption depends on firm heterogeneity. As for welfare, whereas with complete contracts an R&D subsidy is enough to solve the inefficiency due to R&D spillovers, with incomplete contracts a production subsidy is also needed.     

A Very Simple Model for Declining Mean Fitness

We describe a large-population one-locus, two-allele model that, for certain values of viability and fertility selection parameters, displays a substantial monotonic decline in population mean fitness, concurrent with complete replacement of the allele associated with higher fitness by the allele associated with lower fitness.     

A Simple Model of Commodity Taxation and Cross-border Shopping

This paper sets up a simple model in which two countries, differing in geographical extent, engage in commodity tax competition originating in opportunities for cross-border shopping. The non-cooperative tax equilibrium and various coordination initiatives are examined in the benchmark model and in two model extensions incorporating (i) costs of transportation for goods and (ii) border inspection. Among the more surprising results are the following: with (i), pure profits accrue to sellers near the border, but subjecting them to tax may lower the country's total tax revenue; with (ii), the volume of cross-border shopping may well increase.
JEL classification : H 20; H 87; H 26     

契约执行效率与地区出口绩效差异-基于行业特征的经验分析

生产率差异是比较优势的重要来源,而契约执行效率又是决定行业生产率的制度因素之一.本文利用中国省区28个行业数据检验了契约执行效率对出口贸易的影响.实证结果显示,契约执行效率高的地区更倾向于专业化生产和出口契约密集度较高、物质资产专用性较强和人力资产专用性较弱的产品.在控制比较优势的其他影响因素及变量内生性之后,上述结论依然稳健.本文进一步指出,企业的一体化程度差异是解释上述结论的关键因素.     

Cross‐Border Intellectual Property Rights: Contract Enforcement and Absorptive Capacity

This article studies the cross‐border protection of intellectual property rights (IPR) as an outcome of a contract obtained through a Nash bargaining process between an innovative North and an imitative South. The level of disclosure required in such contract is higher, the more capable is the South in copying if bargaining breaks down. This raises questions about the suitability of universal IPR standards through a single contract. The threat of a penalty in case of non‐compliance can, however, reduce the outside option of more advanced countries and make a stricter IPR regime enforceable by harmonizing their interests with relatively less developed nations.     

A Simple Model of Entrepreneurship for Principles of Economics Courses

The critical roles of entrepreneurs in creating, operating, and destroying markets, as well as their importance in driving long-term economic growth are still generally either absent from principles of economics texts or relegated to later chapters. The primary difficulties in explaining entrepreneurship at the principles level are the lack of a universally accepted definition, a plausible explanation of the demand for entrepreneurship, and a diagram that summarizes the impact of entrepreneurship on market equilibrium and growth—a definition, a story, and a picture. This article discusses how the notion of the stationary state associated with Schumpeter (1911 Schumpeter, J. A. 1911/1983. Theory of economic development., Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.  [Google Scholar]/1983), Knight (1921 Knight, F. H. 1921/1971. Risk, uncertainty and profit, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]/1971), and Weber (1930 Weber, M. 1930/2002. The Protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism, New York: Scribner's.  [Google Scholar]/2002) can provide a framework for integrating the entrepreneur into the early part of principles of economics courses.