Contracting inside an organization: An experimental study

In this paper we propose and test a contracting mechanism, Multi-Contract Cost Sharing (MCCS), for use in the management of a sequence of projects. The mechanism is intended for situations where (1) the contractor knows more about the true costs of various projects than does the contracting agency (adverse selection), and (2) unobservable effort on the part of the contractor may lead to cost reductions (moral hazard). The proposed process is evaluated in an experimental environment that includes the essential economic features of the NASA process for the acquisition of Space Science Strategy missions. The environment is complex and the optimal mechanism is unknown. The design of the MCCS mechanism is based on the optimal contract for a simpler related environment. We compare the performance of the proposed process to theoretical benchmarks and to an implementation of the current NASA ‘cost cap’ procurement process. The data indicate that the proposed MCCS process generates significantly higher value per dollar spent than using cost caps, because it allocates resources more efficiently among projects and provides greater incentives to engage in cost-reducing innovations. Electronic Supplementary Material Supplementary material is available in the online version of this article at . JEL Classification C72, C92, D82, L32     

项目导向型供应链跨组织合作行为激励机制

在假定项目型组织平等合作的基础上,运用委托-代理理论和博弈论,纳入总承包商给予专业分包商基于监控信号的奖惩结构,构建了基于监控信号的项目导向型供应链跨组织合作激励模型,并与传统激励模型进行比较,通过数据模拟与模型算例,研究了监控信号对激励契约设计的影响。研究表明：通过引入监控信号,总承包商可以收集到更多有关专业分包商行为选择的信息,通过调整对专业分包商的奖励和惩罚力度,可以促进专业分包商采取合作行为,降低其机会主义行为,也可以降低总承包商对专业分包商激励的盲目性。     

工期投机行为对投标的影响研究

成本加工期双因素投标方式中,承包商的最优报价并非成本最低时的报价,工期也并非成本最低时的工期,最优报价较最低价略有提高,工期则略有缩短。另一方面,由于业主要严格控制建设时间,必然导致成本较正常水平上升,这就为承包商的投机性投标行为提供了可能性。     

契约视角下的PPP项目承包商治理机制研究

本文从契约关系的视角研究了PPP项目承包商的治理机制问题,包括正式契约关系治理、剩余权利配置和关系契约治理,这3种治理机制分别对应着双方合作内容的不确定性程度。研究表明,正式契约适合对业主-承包商契约中确定性内容的治理,即利用明确的契约条款对双方合作关系中的行为风险或敲竹杠风险进行抑制。关系契约可以建立在事后双方可观察到的结果的基础上,适合对较不确定内容的治理。剩余权力的配置是一种弹性治理机制,适用于任何无法描述、无法判断或无法评价结果的不确定性内容,它通过对项目剩余索取权和剩余控制权的对称配置,提高承包商的主动合作性。     

基于Moran过程的PPP项目承包商机会主义行为演化动态

在PPP项目中,由于政府部门和承包商的目标不一致以及信息不对称等原因的存在,使得在其全寿命周期过程中,承包商的机会主义行为屡见不鲜。本文基于随机演化博弈理论,建构基于Moran过程的博弈模型,旨在探讨推动PPP项目承包商不采取机会主义行为策略的有利条件。研究表明,承包商数目不断扩大,通过降低承包商之间的举报成本,增大惩处力度,可使降低机会主义行为发生概率的效果显著。进一步,借助数值算例,对研究结果进行验证并给出相应的管理对策。     

非对称信息条件下最优承包合同的研究

承发包双方在合同变更中的机会主义和信息的非对称性,产生了“敲竹杠”和投资过小现象以及隐藏信息的道德风险问题。运用委托-代理理论建立了非对称信息条件下的最优承包合同模型,对上述问题进行了研究。证明在承包商隐藏信息务件下,最优承包合同将使承包商的专用投资水平下降、工程项目工期延长、业主效用降低。     

PROCUREMENT EXPERIMENTS WITH UNKNOWN COSTS OF QUALITY

Abstract.  We experimentally examine the efficiency and profitability of two different procurement auctions allowing for quality differences across products. We compare the vector auction with more competition on the sellers' side with a half-auction, reflecting actual procurement practice – an auction for the cheaper variant and bargaining with the contractor about the additional cost of the better quality variant. Our main hypothesis, that buyers are better off when using the vector auction instead of the half-auction, is confirmed when quality differences of variants are large and the uncertainty of the cost difference is also large.     

Procurement favouritism and technology adoption

It is well known that the design of cost minimizing procurement rules for the selection of a contractor among distinct technological groups requires the favouritism of inefficient firms. In this paper, I show that, if technology adoption is non-contractible, these policies will also provide optimal incentives for the inefficient firms to adopt more efficient technologies.     

PUBLIC VERSUS PRIVATE DELIVERY OF MUNICIPAL SOLID WASTE SERVICES: THE CASE OF NORTH CAROLINA

This paper examines the effects of different institutional arrangements and characteristics on cost savings, efficiency gains, and productivity of delivering municipal solid waste services. A cost function approach is employed, and North Carolina municipal data for three years (1997, 2001, and 2003) are used for the analysis. Empirical findings indicate that there is no significant difference in cost savings between public delivery and private contractor delivery of solid waste services, a finding similar to those of other recent studies. There are three possible reasons for this. First, the threat of competition and contracting out might have led to cost savings in the cases of public delivery. Second, there might be a lack of competition because a few large private contractors have been able to win follow‐on contracts over the years. Third, there might be substantial transaction costs arising as the result of private contracting. (JEL H40, H83, Q53)     

电子商务平台上的信息不对称、交易成本与企业机制的运用

基于交易成本理论,将电子商务平台上交易的商品分为两类——物理属性标准的商品和物理属性不标准的商品,将商品信息分为两类——物理描述信息和价格信息,研究了两类商品在两类信息上存在的信息不对称问题,并对比分析了在线交易中的市场机制和企业机制。指出:在市场机制下,信誉机制和搜索排名机制能有效缓解物理属性不标准的商品在物理描述信息上的信息不对称,但无法有效缓解物理属性标准的商品在价格信息上的信息不对称,解决物理属性标准的商品的价格信息不对称需要企业机制;在电子商务平台上部分地用企业机制代替市场机制可以减少交易成本。     

Sequential voting with abstention

Dekel and Piccione [2000. Sequential voting procedures in symmetric binary elections. J. Polit. Economy 108, 34–55] have proven that information cascades do not necessarily affect the properties of information aggregation in sequential elections: under standard conditions, any symmetric equilibrium of a simultaneous voting mechanism is also an equilibrium of the correspondent sequential mechanism. We show that when voters can abstain, these results are sensitive to the introduction of an arbitrarily small cost of voting: the set of equilibria in the two mechanisms are generally disjoint; and the informative properties of the equilibrium sets can be ranked. If an appropriate q-rule is chosen, when the cost of voting is small the unique symmetric equilibrium of the simultaneous voting mechanism dominates all equilibria of the sequential mechanism.     

Rules of evidence and liability in contract litigation: The efficiency of the General Dynamics rule

We examine rules of evidence and liability in contract litigation. When a contractor fails to perform, it has a legal defense that the buyer withheld private information relevant to the performance of the contract. Suppose the buyer claims that admitting evidence for the defense would compromise a valuable secret, for example, a state secret, what should the legal rule be? We show that the evidentiary rules introduced by the Supreme Court in General Dynamics v. U.S. lead to a more efficient outcome than either a strict liability rule or an evidentiary rule requiring the disclosure of the buyer's private information.     

基于套牢的开发商与承包商博弈分析

通过引入不可证实性系数,分析了开发商与承包商的博弈过程,并且得出结论:当市场状况良好时,即使承包商采取套牢行为,开发商仍将投资房地产;如果开发商的可占用准租不足以支付承包商所侵占的利益,开发商将可能不再投资房地产.其中,事项的不可证实性使承包商有机会侵占开发商的利益,因此,减少事项的不可证实性可以最大化开发商的收益.垫资合同在很大程度上可以减轻承包商的套牢程度.但无论如何,合同的不完全性都难以解决,套牢是不可避免的存在的,但是只要开发商能够从中获取超额收益,其投资行为就是必然的.     

The communication cost of selfishness

We consider how many bits need to be exchanged to implement a given decision rule when the mechanism must be ex post or Bayesian incentive compatible. For ex post incentive compatibility, the communication protocol must reveal enough information to calculate monetary transfers to the agents to motivate them to be truthful (agents' payoffs are assumed to be quasilinear in such transfers). For Bayesian incentive compatibility, the protocol may need to hide some information from the agents to prevent deviations contingent on the information. In both settings with selfish agents, the communication cost can be higher than in the case in which the agents are honest and can be relied upon to report truthfully. The increase is the “communication cost of selfishness.” We provide an exponential upper bound on the increase. We show that the bound is tight in the Bayesian setting, but we do not know this in the ex post setting. We describe some cases where the communication cost of selfishness proves to be very low.     

The Efficient and Fair Approval of "Multiple-Cost-Single-Benefit" Projects under Unilateral Information

This paper focuses on indivisible " multiple-cost-single-benefit " projects that must be approved by the government. A simple mechanism is proposed that ensures an efficient and fair implementation of such projects. The proposed mechanism is appropriate for a unilateral information structure: the single beneficiary has complete information on the cost and benefit of the project while the government official has no such information and the cost bearers have information only on each other's costs.     

Investor Reaction to Inter-corporate Business Contracting: Evidence and Explanation

We examine the stock market reaction to 1227 inter-corporate ordinary business contract announcements reported by Dow Jones between January 1, 1990 and December 31, 2001. Around contract announcement dates, we find statistically significant positive average abnormal returns and abnormal trading volume for contractors, but insignificant positive abnormal returns and negative abnormal volume for contractees. Cross-sectionally, contract announcement period returns are higher for contractors who are small relative to the contract size, have higher return volatility, larger market-to-book ratios and higher profitability. The announcement period returns of contract-awarding firms are not significant and are only marginally related to cross-sectional explanatory factors. The results are consistent with two explanatory stories: contractor quasi-rents induced by the winner's curse and information signalling about contractor production costs. The results are not consistent with perfect competition, with contracts having positive net present values for both parties, and with a version of incomplete contracting theory.     

企业信息技术应用对开放式创新的影响：交易成本视角

既有文献已初步检验了企业信息技术应用与开放式创新的关系,但未深入探索其影响机制。鉴于此,从交易成本视角解释二者间的影响机制。结果表明,信息技术应用是推动企业开放式创新的重要因素。进一步扩展分析发现：信息技术应用对企业纵向创新合作的推动作用强于社会创新合作;相对于低技术行业,企业信息技术应用的开放式创新效应在高技术行业更为显著;地区信任度提高增强了企业信息技术应用对开放式创新的推动作用。造成企业信息技术应用对开放式创新产生上述效应差异的一个重要原因在于,开放式创新产生的交易成本在创新合作类型间、行业间、地区间存在明显的异质性,从而检验了企业信息技术应用对开放式创新的影响机制。     

Incentive Regulation and The Cost Structure of The Local Telephone Exchange Network

This paper combines an engineering process model of the cost of local exchange telecommunications firms with an analytical model of optimal incentive regulation (with ex post cost observability), to study empirically the properties of the optimal regulatory mechanism. Relying on detailed properties of the cost function, we examine three issues: (i) the extent of natural monopoly when informational rents associated with regulation are taken into account; (ii) the extent of incentive correction, which expresses the divergence of pricing under the optimal mechanism from optimal pricing under complete information; (iii) the implementation of optimal regulation through a menu of linear contracts. Our findings are that, for fixed territory, strong economies of scale allow local exchange telecommunications to retain monopoly characteristics even when the (informational) costs of regulation are properly accounted for, the incentive correction term is small in magnitude, and that optimal regulation can be well approximated through relatively simple linear contracts.     

区域中小企业创新系统竞争优势研究

基于企业能力理论、交易费用理论、组织信息处理理论,以区域中小企业创新能力、交易成本、信息能力与信息需求的适配性为中间变量,分析了区域中小企业创新系统获取竞争优势的内在机理,并运用结构方程模型进行了实证研究。     

Simple sequencing problems with interdependent costs

In this paper we analyze simple sequencing problems under incomplete information and interdependent costs. We prove the necessity of concave cost function for implementability of such problems. Implementability means that one can achieve aggregate cost minimization in ex-post equilibrium. We also show that simple sequencing problems are implementable if and only if the mechanism is a ‘generalized VCG mechanism.’ We then consider first best implementability, that is implementability with budget balancing transfer. We prove that for implementable n agent simple sequencing problems, with polynomial cost function of order (n−2) or less, one can achieve first best implementability. Finally, for the class of implementable simple sequencing problems with “sufficiently well behaved” cost function, this is the only first best class.