董事报酬、独立性与公司治理——来自中国上市公司的经验证据

本文利用中国上海和深圳证券交易所上市公司2003-2005年的数据,实证分析了董事报酬结构和董事会独立性之间的关系,并在考虑董事报酬内生性基础上,进一步检验了董事报酬、独立性和公司绩效的关系.研究结果发现,长任期的CEO、CEO兼任董事长、较大比例的内部董事和较大的董事会规模构成了中国上市公司的监管障碍.董事报酬是一种公司治理的强化机制,当董事会保持独立时,其报酬结构能更好的激励董事履行监管职能.但是,当董事会失去其独立性时,其报酬结构会加剧公司的代理冲突.授予董事会合理的激励报酬可以克服公司监管障碍,提高公司治理水平.     

Executive shareholding,compensation, and analyst forecast of Chinese firms

We examine the impact of executive and leadership shareholding and cash compensation on analyst forecast error and dispersion as proxies for information asymmetry. We find that firms pay higher compensation (or excess compensation) to executives and directors are associated with higher information asymmetry. The positive association is stronger where executives’ and directors’ shareholdings are higher. Shareholding appears to facilitate managerial entrenchment and gives highly paid executives/leadership stronger structural power which adversely affects information disclosure leading to larger forecast error and dispersion. These results are robust to different measures of compensation and alternative models controlling for the predictability of firm-level earnings. Our findings indicate that executive/director shareholding and compensation do not provide sufficient incentives for information disclosure by Chinese firms.     

产权性质、独立董事机制与投资效率——来自中国A股非金融类上市公司的经验证据

选取我国沪深两市2006—2010年非金融类上市公司为研究样本,从独立董事职能的角度,结合产权性质,考察了独立董事机制对投资效率的影响。经验证据表明:独立董事比例的提高整体上可明显改善投资效率;相比国有上市公司,提高民营上市公司的独立董事比例能够更显著地改善投资效率;提高独立董事薪酬水平对改善投资效率的作用并不显著;将投资非效率区分为投资不足和投资过度两种情形后,以上结论依然成立。     

Overpayment to directors and future operating performance

This article derives the predicted excess compensation from corporate governance variables and explores the impact of director excessive compensation on future operating performance. By using the data in Taiwan as the research samples, this article finds that overpayment to directors will decrease the future operating performance of the firm. The results are consistent, regardless of analysing in the form of fixed compensation or performance-based compensation.     

Population uncertainty in contests

Summary. We study contests where the set of players is a random variable. If it is known for certain that there will be at least one participant, then aggregate contest expenditure in equilibrium is strictly lower in a contest with population uncertainty than in a non-uncertain contest with the same expected number of players. This suggests an explanation of, for example, why empirical studies show rent-seeking expenditures to be much lower than predicted by other theories.Received: 29 June 2003, Revised: 14 December 2004, JEL Classification Numbers: C72, D44, D72, D82, K41. Correspondence to: Karl Wärneryd     

后股权分置时期中国上市公司独立董事激励研究

股权分置改革之前,独立董事制度在中国公司治理中发挥的作用并不理想,原因是多方面的。在后股权分置,完善独立董事制度有了新机遇。独立董事制度本身的不完善给公司治理带来的新的代理问题值得关注,委托代理理论以激励相容来解决该问题。独立董事制度中独立性变量的引入,使得独立董事制度的激励设计不同于激励经理人。除了固定薪金的激励外,声誉激励在独立董事制度中的应用显得格外重要．而独立董事行业协会制度的建立保证了声誉激励的实施。     

A Revealed Preference Theory for Non-expected Utility on "Certain × Uncertain" Consumption Pairs

In this paper we consider a two-period decision problem, where the feasible set is the set of "certain × uncertain" consumption pairs. That is, the decision-maker chooses ( x , m ) in a feasible set, where x is a certain first-period consumption and m is a random second-period consumption, a Borel probability measure on the set of real numbers. The purpose of this paper is to present revealed preference theory for non-expected utility on "certain × uncertain" consumption pairs. We present necessary and sufficient conditions for the data to be consistent with some non-expected utility functions.
JEL Classification Numbers: D11, D81, D91     

Incentives and managerial effort under competitive pressure: An experiment

We investigate how increased competition affects firm owners׳ incentives and managers׳ efforts in a laboratory experiment. Each owner offers a compensation scheme to his manager in two different conditions: under monopoly and under Cournot duopoly. Following acceptance of the compensation, the manager chooses an effort level to increase the probability of a cost-reduction which affects the firm׳s profit. According to standard theoretical predictions the entry of a rival firm in a monopolistic industry affects negatively both the incentive compensation and the effort level. Our experimental findings show that the entry of a rival firm has two effects on managerial effort: an internalization effect which affects positively the level of effort and an income effect which has a negative impact on effort. The combined outcome of these two effects is neutral with respect to managerial effort: we observe that when competition reduces the firm׳s profit, the owner reacts by offering lower incentives but despite the lower incentives the manager still accepts the contract offer and exerts the same level of effort than under the monopoly condition.     

论我国上市公司董事会治理结构存在的问题与对策

我国上市公司董事会治理在董事会机构、董事会会议、独立董事、董事会外部制约机制等方面都存在一定问题.解决的对策是:增强董事会的独立性,改变大股东完全控制董事会的局面;加强独立董事制度建设,营造独立董事充分行权的环境;加强对董事的违规处罚力度,强化董事的诚信意识;建立科学合理的董事会考评机制.对于董事会的考核可以从两方面去进行:一方面是对董事会的整体考评,另一方面是对董事个人的考核.我国可以借鉴美国的考核评估方法,由非投资相关者专门针对董事会进行考核评估.     

On the irrelevance of insider trading for managerial compensation

We examine changes in the compensation of CEOs of German firms after the prohibition of insider trading (IT) in 1994 to test whether IT is a relevant compensation device. While we find that the performance elasticity of explicit CEO pay slightly increases subsequent to the IT law adoption for non-financial firms indicating an incentive-substitution effect, the overall change in levels seems modest. We explore the hypothesis that compensation for forgone IT profits in general is small because typically, firms lack at least one of the two necessary conditions for profitable IT: the existence of a liquid stock market imposing low costs of transactions and the presence of a small number of co-insiders, preventing the information rent to be competed away. Based on a difference-in-difference estimation, we indeed find that explicit pay increases more strongly for intensely traded firms and decreases for non-financial firms and insurance companies with a higher number of co-insiders. The combined effect is relatively small except for firms with the most liquid shares.     

家族所有权调节下的CEO薪酬与研发投资

以2013—2018年期间379家中国A股技术密集型公司数据为样本,研究了家族所有权在研发投资和CEO薪酬关系中的调节作用。结果发现:与非家族企业相比,家族企业CEO薪酬与研发投资水平关联性较高;家族所有权比例较高的家族企业对CEO薪酬与研发投资的关系具有更强的正向调节能力;低风险与高风险的家族企业在研发投资上没有显著差异。因此,家族所有权在研发投资和CEO薪酬关系中具有调节的作用是基于信息优势和较长的投资期限,而并非风险规避。进一步研究发现:家族企业的研发投资比非家族企业具有更高的投资效率、并可转化为更高的企业价值和增长率。     

独立董事制度与中小股东利益保护

设立独立董事，对上市公司中小股东的利益保护能够起到一定的作用，但是绝不要过于依赖，第一，独立董事是经济人，在效用最大化行为原则和许多现实条件的约束下，独立董事难于与中小股东激励相容，独立董事积极保护中小股东利益的动力有限；第二，独立董事在董事会中，由于董事会的机制限制，独立董事保护中小股东利益能力也十分有限.本提出，保护中小股东的利益，关键要在如下三个方面下功夫；第二，健全公司股东利益保护的法制，特别是有关重大经营信息披露的时限与责任规定；第二，降低大股东持股的首位度，形成股东制约股东的机制；第三，加大对重大的股东侵权案件的查外，既追究侵权的法人机构的责任，更要追究当事的自然人违反诚信义务的民事责任和刑事责任。     

Using Choice Experiments to Investigate the Policy Relevance of Heterogeneity in Farmer Agri-Environmental Contract Preferences

Agri-environmental contracts are used to provide incentives for nature management on private land in, e.g. the European Union. The aim of this article is to investigate preference heterogeneity for agri-environmental contracts among farmers in order to discuss potential policy improvements utilising heterogeneity. We used a choice experiment to elicit farmers’ stated preferences for afforestation contracts. Four attributes are investigated: purpose of afforestation, option of cancelling the contract, monitoring, and compensation level. All attributes present a potential conflict between farmers’ and authorities’ interests, which emphasises the importance of knowing how to handle these interests. A random parameter logit model shows that having the option to cancel the contract decreases farmers’ required compensation level and monitoring increases it. Furthermore, farmers are willing to accept a lower compensation when the aim is to protect biodiversity and ground water relative to recreation. Latent class models with class probability variables reveal discrete heterogeneity and support a division into four groups with divergent preferences. For example, a group of farmers who already have forest areas does not find the option of cancelling the contract important, whereas another group relying on the farm for income requires higher compensation. The findings indicate potential for efficiency gains from targeting the contracts.     

COMPENSATORY RESTORATION IN A RANDOM UTILITY MODEL OF RECREATION DEMAND

Natural Resource Damage Assessment cases often call for compensation in non‐monetary or restoration equivalent terms. In this article, we present an approach that uses a conventional economic model, a travel cost random utility model of site choice, to determine compensatory restoration equivalents for hypothetical beach closures on the Gulf Coast of Texas. Our focus is on closures of beaches on the Padre Island National Seashore and compensation for day‐trip users. We identify restoration projects that compensate for beach closures and that have good alignment in terms of compensating those who actually suffer from the closures. (JEL Q26)     

业务复杂度、股权特征与董事会结构

与大多数研究董事会结构是否影响以及如何影响公司业绩或管理层的行为等董事会结构运行效率的论文不同,文章关注的是董事会结构的决定因素,以及它是不是公司根据面临的经营环境所做的一种权衡?为此,文章从公司业务复杂度、股权特征等变量着手,研究它们对董事会结构的影响,同时,还通过主成分分析对研究结果做了进一步的检验。研究结果表明,公司业务复杂度与董事会规模、独立董事比例和独立董事声誉显著正相关;研究还发现股权性质和股东制衡能力也是影响董事会结构形成的重要因素。这些结果表明,公司会根据其经营特征和环境来选择合适的董事会结构。     

Managerial compensation and R&D investments: the role of the external managerial labour market

This paper investigates the importance of the external managerial labour market in the determination of managerial compensation and in the influence of the compensation incentives on a firm’s R&D investments. I design an empirical model including the compensation adjustment regression, of which the focus is the role of the external labour market, and the R&D regression that examines how the compensation incentives derived from the external labour market affect a firm’s R&D intensity. Empirical results suggest that the R&D intensity is positively related to the premium of the actual pay adjustments over the expected pay adjustments based on the external labour market comparisons. The effect of the compensation incentives on the R&D investments is strongest when managers expect pay to decrease but actually experience an increase in pay.     

Regular Quantal Response Equilibrium

The structural Quantal Response Equilibrium (QRE) generalizes the Nash equilibrium by augmenting payoffs with random elements that are not removed in some limit. This approach has been widely used both as a theoretical framework to study comparative statics of games and as an econometric framework to analyze experimental and field data. The framework of structural QRE is flexible: it can be applied to arbitrary finite games and incorporate very general error structures. Restrictions on the error structure are needed, however, to place testable restrictions on the data (Haile et al., 2004). This paper proposes a reduced-form approach, based on quantal response functions that replace the best-response functions underlying the Nash equilibrium. We define a regular QRE as a fixed point of quantal response functions that satisfies four axioms: continuity, interiority, responsiveness, and monotonicity. We show that these conditions are not vacuous and demonstrate with an example that they imply economically sensible restrictions on data consistent with laboratory observations. The reduced-form approach allows for a richer set of regular quantal response functions, which has proven useful for estimation purposes. JEL Classification: D62, C73     

Dividend policy and investor pressure

The economics of dividend policy has focused on the single tight narrative that dividends keep managers honest, mitigating concerns that they over-invest. This article provides a critique of that agency narrative, arguing that pressure from short-term focused investors, executives and board members pushes the firm into preemptive actions of returning too much cash via dividends. We analyze three channels of influence for investor pressure through 1) threat of takeovers, 2) shareholder value oriented corporate governance, measured by director independence and board equity incentives, and 3) trading and institutional ownership patterns. We find that firms adopt a higher dividend payout to discourage takeover bids. Also, FTSE 100 firms, that are most focused on shareholder value governance in the form of equity-based compensation and a higher share of independent directors, display a higher dividend payout. Frequency of trading and ownership by transient investors seeking current profits also predict increased dividend payout. Traditional agency theory, focused on dividends as a tool for managerial discipline, is not strongly supported by the results, which rather support a narrative of short-term investor pressure on firms irrespective of investment opportunities.     

利益协调论:对独立董事制度的一种新理论解说

依据企业契约理论,以利益相关者通过提供要素使用权合作投资组成企业这一合约过程中发生的利益冲突与协调为主线,提出了"利益协调论",对独立董事的本原性质和治理效应弱化的根本原因进行了重新解读,并基于"利益协调论"的基本逻辑,从独立董事的选拔、功能定位、职责细化、激励约束等方面剖析了现有制度安排缺陷,并在此基础上提出一个逻辑一贯的治理分析框架,以期真正发挥独立董事治理硬约束的作用.     

Ordinal Efficiency and the Polyhedral Separating Hyperplane Theorem

We study problems in which each of finitely many agents must be allocated a single object, based on the agents' rankings of pure outcomes. A random allocation is ordinally efficient if it is not ordinally dominated in the sense of there being another random assignment that gives each agent a first order stochastically dominant distribution of objects. We show that any ordinally efficient random assignment maximizes the sum of expected utilities for some vector of vNM utility functions that are consistent with the given ordinal preferences. One method of proof uses a new version of the separating hyperplane theorem for polyhedra. Journal of Economic Literature Classification Numbers: C78, D61.