The Internal Organization of the Firm, Transaction Costs, and Macroeconomic Growth

This articleanalyzes the links between the internal organization of the firmand macroeconomic growth. We present a Schumpeterian growth modelin which firms face agency costs due to the existence of asymmetriesof information and the formation of vertical collusions insidethose firms. To respond to the threat of collusion, optimal collusion-proofincentive contracts depend on the efficiency of collusive sidecontracting within organizations. Collusion affects thereforethe firms' profitability, the incentives to innovate, and, finally,the stationary equilibrium growth rate of the economy. On theother hand, when the growth rate is small, the prospects of long-termrelationships within firms increase the agents' incentives toinvest in a better collusive technology. We then discuss thetwo-way relationships between the structure of internal transactioncosts, organizational technologies, and macroeconomic growth.     

Optimal collusion under cost asymmetry

Cost asymmetry is generally thought to hinder collusion because a more efficient firm has both more to gain from deviations and less to fear from retaliation than less efficient firms. Our paper reexamines this conventional wisdom and characterizes optimal collusion without any prior restriction on the class of strategies. We stress that firms can credibly agree on retaliation schemes that maximally punish even the most efficient firm. This implies that whenever collusion is sustainable under cost symmetry, some collusion is also sustainable under cost asymmetry; efficient collusion, however, remains more difficult to sustain when costs are asymmetric. Finally, we show that in the presence of side payments cost asymmetry facilitates collusion.     

Power in the multinational corporation in industry equilibrium

Recent theories of the multinational corporation introduce the property rights model of the firm and examine whether to integrate or outsource firm activities locally or to a foreign country. This paper focuses instead on the internal organization of the multinational corporation by examining the power allocation between headquarters and subsidiaries. We provide a framework to analyse the interaction between the decision to serve the local market by exporting or FDI, market access and the optimal mode of organization of the multinational corporation. We find that subsidiary managers are given decision power to run the firm at intermediate levels of host country competition. We then provide comparative statics on the optimal organization of the multinational corporation for changes in fixed FDI entry costs, trade costs, as well as changes in information technology.      

科技企业孵化器与创业企业合谋分析

科技企业孵化器内存在着多重信息不对称。讨论了科技企业孵化器中的委托代理关系,并分析了科技企业孵化器经理人与创业企业合谋的成因与动机。建立了科技企业孵化器经理人与创业企业合谋模型,讨论合谋损失与代理成本以及影响合谋的财政返还、税收强度、捆绑投资、市场声誉等因素。研究表明,财政返还降低了创投与孵化器经理人的代理成本,捆绑投资使合谋的动机降低,可以促进孵化器与创投的合作,提升创业企业的成功率。并提出降低两者合谋的财政返还、信息记录、孵化器投资的治理建议。     

我国上市公司风险管理决策的实证研究

本文应用公司财务理论,对我国上市公司风险管理费用的决定因素进行实证研究。从公司的财务困境成本、代理成本、税率等因素出发讨论了公司风险管理决策行为,并建立了单变量和多变量模型分析我国公司风险管理费用的决定因素。在风险管理方面,研究表明,对于我国公司在风险管理方面的决策行为,地方政府的保护行为有很大的影响。     

Entrepreneurial finance and economic growth

This paper develops a theory of the centralization of firms engaged in multi-market collusive agreements. A centralized organization (called the unitary or U-form) allows price coordination across several markets, whereas with decentralized (the multidivisional or M-form) firms the probability that the antitrust authority will find evidence of collusion on one market while investigating the other is lower. We show that the firm’s choice of internal structure depends to a large extent on product substitutability and the instruments used by the antitrust authority.     

Finance constraints or free cash flow?

It has long been argued that firms prefer internal to external finance for funding investment. Modern literatures in industrial organization, macroeconomics, and finance argue this preference is caused by information asymmetries. There are, however, important disagreements about the effect of the asymmetries. Asymmetries may lead to binding financing constraints, or they may allow managers to use free cash flow for unprofitable projects. Each model predicts a different relationship between investment and changes in debt finance and this paper estimates this relationship using firm-level data. The principal findings are that both financing constraints and the agency costs of free cash flow affect investment in a manner consistent with a life cycle model of the firm.     

债务期限结构影响公司价值吗?

使用OLS多元回归分析方法研究了中国上市公司的债务期限结构对其市场价值的影响。结果表明,上市公司的长期债务比例越高,公司的市场价值越低。在自由现金流量较高的上市公司样本中,长期债务比例与公司价值间的负相关关系的显著水平和系数绝对值都明显大于在自由现金流量较低的上市公司样本中的情况。这表明,使用更多的短期债务有利于降低公司的代理成本,从而提高公司的市场价值。     

垂直差异化与合谋稳定性关系分析

市场行为中的默契合谋能使企业获得超额利润,现存的关于生产同质品和差异化产品的经验性研究经常能发现默契合谋的证据.在现实经济的默契合谋行为中,不同的成本结构适用于不同的经济环境或者不同的行业、产业分析,也直接影响着合谋和背离合谋所得的利润,对合谋稳定性有着重要的影响.在垂直差异化的不同成本(固定成本、可变成本)结构下,企业参与竞争的不同竞争类型(古诺竞争和伯川德竞争)对合谋稳定性的影响也是有差异的.     

城市化、结构变动与农业发展——基于城乡两部门的动态一般均衡分析

本文认为,地方政府和企业之间的合谋是中国经济的高增长率和高事故率并存的原因。我们刻画了最优的防范合谋契约,在该契约下地方政府和企业拥有正的信息租金,防范合谋将给中央政府带来额外的成本。在临界值以下,赔偿金具有部分地替代监督和惩罚的作用。以最优的防范合谋契约为基准,我们解释了造成当前政企合谋大量存在的若干重要原因:中央政府防范合谋的成本太高、地方政府缺乏长远预期、企业被过度抽税、第四方监督失效和惩罚不可置信等。     

Is capital a collusion device?

Summary. We examine how irreversible capital reduces the possibility of a duopoly to sustain implicit collusion by grim strategies, when the product is homogenous and firms compete in quantities. Compared with the case of reversible capital, there are two countervailing effects: Deviation from an existing collusion is less attractive, because capital once installed causes costs forever. But the punishment will also be less severe due to the high capacity the deviating firm can build before punishment starts. The last effect dominates, meaning that the commitment value of capital is negative for all firms. If capital is irreversible, collusion breaks down for realistic magnitudes of interest rates. Received: April 30, 1999; revised version: November 30, 2001     

Cartels in the unidirectional Hotelling model

We study the impact of space on perfect collusion sustainability within the unidirectional Hotelling model where the firms are constrained to move to the left. We obtain that when the firm that located to the left of the Hotelling segment has the greater incentive to deviate, the distance between the firms has a negative impact on the capability of the firms to sustain the collusion in equilibrium. On the other hand, when the firm that located to the right has the greater incentive to deviate, greater spatial distance makes the collusion easier to sustain in equilibrium. These results substantially differ from the bidirectional Hotelling model.     

企业战略联盟的市场绩效分析

从产业经济学的角度看,任何一种正式或非正式的经济组织,其市场绩效都存在一定的差异,导致市场绩效降低的企业行为或组织形式必然受到政府的管制。例如,垄断和串谋在市场经济国家都被视为不正当的竞争行为,政府将用法律手段对其进行规制。企业战略联盟作为一种企业间合作组织,它与垄断和串谋究竟有何本质区别?政府是否应该用法律手段进行规制?要回答这些问题,则必须从市场绩效的角度对其进行评价。     

Families and firms: Agency costs and labor market imperfections in Sialkot's surgical industry

The family firm is generally viewed as an organizational solution to agency costs in the labor market for managers and institutional underdevelopment. Consistent with this view, this paper links the preponderance of family firms in the surgical instrument industry of Sialkot to the prevailing agency and institutional problems. However, strong dependence on family management coupled with restrictions on family size constrains the firms from optimally choosing management size. The resulting labor market distortion is manifested by a significant positive correlation between the founder's family size and the firm size such that the founders who have more brothers (a larger pool of potential managers) end up with bigger firms.     

Self‐protection? Antidumping Duties,Collusion, and FDI*

It is well established that the threat of antidumping duties can help sustain collusion between a foreign firm and its domestic counterpart. However, when the foreign firm is a multinational with a subsidiary in the domestic country, that subsidiary can undermine efforts for protection, thereby diminishing the threat of duties that would otherwise sustain collusion. Accordingly, we show that the multinational may choose to submit to a tariff even under collusion since evidence indicates that duties are more difficult to remove than initiate. In this way, it is possible to obtain a greater degree of commitment, although it comes at a cost. Nevertheless, we prove that this can be a more profitable strategy than those previously explored. Thus, a parent firm may instruct its subsidiary to support duties against the parent. In fact, we find several cases where subsidiaries of multinationals have indeed filed for protection from their own parents.     

科斯《企业的性质》之质疑

企业是资源所有者的取得更多的收益而建立起来的经济组织，交易成本的存在并不是企业存在的根本原因，科斯将企业定义为不同于价格调节机制的企业家计划调节机制，源于其错将企业计划混同于计划经济，事实上，企业是以市场合约为基础形成的，按市场运行原则运作的市场性组织，其资源配置并不独立于市场价格机制之外，价格调节机制与企业家调节机制是不可分割的两个方面，任何企业作为市场参与者与市场都是互动的。     

Mechanism Design under Collusion and Uniform Transfers

We study mechanism design under collusion focusing on the transaction costs in coalition formation created by asymmetric information among agents. In our setting, the regulator is constrained to use uniform transfers and this generates room for collusion between the regulated firms. We first show that when the gains from collusion are smaller than a threshold, the firms fail to realize the gains because of transaction costs. When the gains are larger than the threshold, we characterize the optimal collusion‐proof mechanism. Finally, we show that when the regulator is constrained to use uniform transfers, the collusion‐proofness principle does not hold.     

The Life Cycle of Regulatory Agencies: Dynamic Capture and Transaction Costs

The dynamics of regulation is analysed in a model where regulatory capture comes from the repeated interaction between an interest group and a regulatory agency. Regulatory institutions offer a framework for this dynamic process. They put constraints on the interest group's influence. The dynamics of regulation and its long-run outcome depend on the political principal's, the regulator's and the regulated form's time preferences and their information. Some foundations for the transaction costs of side-contracting used in the standard literature on collusion are provided. Those transaction costs are linked to the precise nature of regulatory institutions.     

Strategic R&D and the innovation of products: understanding the role of time preferences and product differentiation

We evaluate the effects of innovation on competition using an optimal control approach that incorporates firms' time preferences. Using a model where firm(s) innovates by investing in research and development to create a more appealing product for heterogeneous consumers, we examine conditions that maximize social welfare. When firm(s) choose discount rate regardless of market structure, a monopoly will develop more innovative products. However, we show that duopolies may increase innovation if competition alters firms' outlook. Finally, we identify firm incentives to behave myopically, which in the context of collusion may impede industry-wide innovation.     

Board independence and operating performance: analysis on (French) company and individual data

This article studies the relationship between board independence and firm operating performance in French listed companies. We take advantage of an original database, with a time-series dimension that can be used to mitigate heterogeneity and dynamic endogeneity issues. In addition, this database can be disaggregated at the individual (director) level. This design enables us to introduce firm fixed effects and individual fixed effects in firm performance equations, thereby controlling for heterogeneity at the firm and individual levels. Our main result is to document a significant negative relationship between independence and accounting performance. This result suggests that, in the French context, the costs of independence (i.e. the informational gap supported by independent directors compared to insiders and affiliated directors) outweigh the benefits of independence (i.e. the reduction in agency costs).