Preemptive collusion among corruptible law enforcers

This paper considers collusion between a supervisor and an agent within a Principal–Supervisor–Agent model. Other papers consider the possibility of collusion after the supervisor has exerted costly effort to obtain hard (“verifiable”) evidence regarding the agent’s actions, information which, if reported would result in the agent being fined with a certain probability. That is, collusion occurs because the supervisor may accept a bribe in exchange for hiding the information he has obtained. This paper allows the supervisor and the agent to enter into a collusive contract either before or after the supervisor has exerted effort to find verifiable information regarding the agent’s actions. The former type of collusion, which occurs after the supervisor has exerted effort, entails ex-post corruption, while the latter, which occurs before the supervisor has exerted effort, entails preemptive corruption. This paper shows that although raising the supervisor’s reward discourages ex-post corruption, it can simultaneously encourage preemptive corruption. Hence, raising the supervisor’s reward will not always discourage collusion. This result further implies that though privatizing law enforcement can always be used to eliminate ex-post corruption, it cannot be used to eliminate preemptive corruption. Furthermore, when compared to ex-post collusion, an equilibrium without corruption is always socially preferred. However, when compared to preemptive collusion, an equilibrium without corruption may not always be socially preferred.     

发展中国家普遍服务义务的经济分析

本文构建一个简单的非对称信息模型,分析发展中国家特定的普遍服务问题。在模型中,政府与垄断企业的非对称信息产生于在农村提供服务的边际成本,最优普遍服务政策可以用两种规制手段即资费和网络投资来实现。本文对区别定价和统一定价两种情形进行了对比分析,得出的结论是：在实施区别定价时,与完全信息相比,不完全信息将提高农村地区的资费水平,并且减小相应的网络覆盖面积;而在实施统一定价时,农村地区的定价可能降低,但这是以网络覆盖面积的减小为代价。模型结果还表明,合谋的成胁会弱化企业的激励。有意思的是,在这两种定价机制下,企业和纳税人这两种不同的利益集团均有同规制者合谋的动机。实际上,纳税人利益集团的存在,强化了规制者和企业之间的防止合谋约束,并且为了减少规制者同纳税人利益集团的合谋收益,即使规制者具有高成本信息,也会使配置结果扭曲。     

Collusion, Delegation and Supervision with Soft Information

This paper shows that supervision with soft information is valuable whenever supervisors and supervisees collude under asymmetric information and proceeds then to derive an Equivalence Principle between organizational forms of supervisory and productive activities. We consider an organization with an agent privately informed on his productivity and a risk averse supervisor getting signals on the agent's type. In a centralized organization, the principal can communicate and contract with both the supervisor and the agent. However, these two agents can collude against the principal. In a decentralized organization, the principal only communicates and contracts with the supervisor who in turn sub-contracts with the agent. We show that the two organizations achieve the same outcome. We discuss this equivalence and provide various comparative statics results to assess the efficiency of supervisory structures.     

Beneficial collusion in corruption control: The case of nonmonetary penalties

We analyze a corruption model where a principal seeks to control an agent's corruption by supplementing a costless noncollusive outside detector such as the media with a collusive internal supervisor. The principal's objective is to minimize the overall costs, made up of enforcement costs and social costs of corruption. If the penalties on the corrupt agent and a failing supervisor are nonmonetary in nature and yet the two parties can engage in monetary side-transfers, the principal may stand to benefit by allowing supervisor–agent collusion. This benefit may even prompt the principal to actively encourage collusion by hiring a dishonest supervisor in strict preference over an honest supervisor.     

国有控股公司治理中合谋防御的机制设计

本文对委托人、监督者和代理人的主体进行重新界定,并对无合谋防御机制时的情形作了分析,再针对合谋行为设计出监督者主导和委托人主导两种合谋防御机制。在监督者主导的防御机制中,委托人事前给出一组契约,授权监督者向代理人提供子契约,委托人提供的契约可使得监督者和代理人所得到的转移支付都不小于其实施合谋时的信息租金,让监督者和代理人没有激励进行合谋。在委托人主导型的防御机制中,委托人同时与监督者和代理人签订契约,如代理人谎报自己的成本类型,委托人会对代理人实施罚金,而给予监督者奖励,让监督者有动力积极履行职责,且能激励高成本类型的代理人降低生产成本。     

Hidden Gaming in Hierarchies: Facts and Models*

We study a three-level hierarchy in which the role of the supervisor is to transmit to the entrepreneur (the principal) information about workers' individual performances We are concerned with a form of discretion which arises from monitoring personalized incentive schemes through a supervisor, that we call hidden gaming. The supervisor can use his discretionary power to organize games unobserved by the principal which enable him to extract benefits from workers. This extortion activity decreases the level of efficiency of the organization and it is shown to subsist partly even when the principal monitors the supervisor with the best incentive scheme based on his own information. In some circumstances non-personalized incentive schemes are optimal because of hidden gaming. The paper concludes with a discussion of possible motivations for public intervention within organizations to eliminate extortions due to hidden gaming.     

Reciprocal Supervision,Collusion and Organizational Design

We study the design of supervisory functions in an organization with one principal and two agents. Each agent can perform supervision activities regarding the other agent. We characterize the way the principal must structure incentive payments to avoid any collusive activity between agents. In particular, it is shown that better mutual information between agents may hurt the principal. The other main result is the possibility that it may be better to give up one supervisory function or to have a third party be the supervisor if possible. Finally, we show that such a dual supervisory structure raises the possibility that letting collusion happen may be the best policy.     

我国国有建设工程监理服务的独立性分析

在现阶段,国有建设工程业主代表与建设监理人的地位并不是平等的.社会责任与契约责任的偏离客观上造成监理人权利与责任的失衡,建设监理人存在丧失独立工作的可能.而监理人声誉机制与申述机制的缺乏会将建设监理人独立判断与决策受到国有建设业主代表的不规范行为干预的可能变为现实.平衡建设监理人权利与责任,促进监理行业协会的建设,强化建设监理人自身素质提高监理人独立性的有效途径.因此,从制度层面理顺监理人权利与责任的关系,保证监理人正当行驶权利,对于促进建设监理人的权利与义务的平衡,对于遏制国有建设业主代表的机会主义行为,摆脱国有建设业主代表对工程建设的非法干预,乃至提高国有建设工程效果具有重要的意义.     

Monitoring and collusion with 'soft' information

In the standard principal-supervisor-agent model with collusion,Tirole (1986) shows that employing a supervisor is profitablefor the principal if the supervisor's signal of the agent'scost of production is 'hard' (i.e., verifiable but hideable).Anecdotal evidence suggests that information is sometimes 'soft'(i.e., unverifiable). We show that, in fact, it is profitableto employ a supervisor when information is 'soft' even thoughthe three parties can collude. Therefore, standard applicationsof the principal-supervisor-agent model to regulation and auditinghave more scope than previously thought.     

建设性上级反馈与下属创新行为：调节焦点与工作卷入的作用

基于社会交换理论，构建并验证建设性上级反馈对下属创新行为的影响机制，并详细讨论工作卷入的中介作用以及特质型调节焦点的调节作用。对三阶段收集到的365套上下级配对数据进行回归分析与Bootstrap分析，结果发现建设性上级反馈对下属工作卷入与创新行为均具有显著正向影响；工作卷入部分中介建设性上级反馈对下属创新行为的积极影响；特质型调节焦点不仅调节建设性上级反馈对下属工作卷入的积极影响，还调节工作卷入在建设性上级反馈与下属创新行为关系间的中介作用。     

Preemptive bribery and incomplete information: Does prior knowledge matter?

This paper studies bribery between a firm and a supervisor who monitors the firm for regulatory compliance. Bribery occurs preemptively, that is before the supervisor exerts costly effort to discover the firm's level of noncompliance and collect evidence for successful prosecution. In contrast to previous papers, preemptive bribery is modeled as a Bayesian signaling game because the supervisor is uninformed about the firm's level of noncompliance. We show that under normal informational assumptions, some (possibly all) firms always engage in preemptive bribery. However, if knowledge of the firm's level of noncompliance has implications for the supervisor's ability to collect evidence and prosecute (prior knowledge), preemptive bribery can be completely eliminated. Results which apply to preemptive bribery under complete information do not apply here.     

领导底线心智对新生代员工创造力的影响：一个有调节的中介模型

领导底线心智在工作场所中的破坏性影响逐渐受到学者和管理者关注。基于创造力成分理论和自我决定理论，从个体层次、动机视角探究领导底线心智对新生代员工创造力的作用机制和边界条件。对629份新生代员工问卷数据进行分析，结果证实：领导底线心智对新生代员工创造力具有显著负向影响；职场精神力在领导底线心智与新生代员工创造力间发挥部分中介作用；独立型自我建构负向调节领导底线心智与职场精神力间关系，并增强职场精神力的中介作用；个人—组织价值观匹配正向调节领导底线心智与职场精神力间关系，并弱化职场精神力的中介作用。     

Mechanism design with collusive supervision

We analyze an adverse selection environment with third party supervision. The supervisor is partly informed of the agent's type. The supervisor and the agent collude while interacting with the principal. Contracting with the agent directly and ignoring the presence of the supervisor constitutes the no-supervision benchmark. We show that delegating to the supervisor reduces the principal's payoff compared to the no-supervision benchmark under a standard condition on the distribution of the agent's types. In contrast, if the principal contracts with both the agent and the supervisor, there exists a mechanism that improves the principal's payoff over the no-supervision payoff.     

The role of supervisors in the determination of wages and wage gaps

This article considers labour market discrimination by supervisors as a potential contributor to racial and gender wage gaps. Empirical analysis reveals evidence that all workers, except Hispanic males, earn significantly higher hourly wages when working for a supervisor of the same race and sex as themselves. Furthermore, the results suggest that sex has a larger impact on wages than race for workers with white supervisors, while race has a larger impact on wages than sex for workers with minority supervisors. Based on past research, we theorize that the degree of labour discrimination workers face may also be dependent upon the location and size of the firm in which they are employed. However, decomposing the samples by firm location and size suggests that these two factors cannot adequately explain the observed matched supervisor–worker wage effects, which supports the notion that these wage effects are largely driven by factors other than supervisor discrimination.     

Does supervisor gender affect wages?

This paper uses data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, 1979 (NLSY79) and the Current Population Survey to estimate the wage effects of having a female supervisor. Existing studies, using OLS to estimate the supervisor gender effect, find wage penalties for both men and women associated with working for a female supervisor. We extend this research in two important ways. First, we control for gender segregation at job level as opposed to the broader occupation level. This is important because of the concern that supervisor gender is simply a proxy for the gender-type of the job. Second, we apply fixed effects estimation to control for selection effects of supervisor gender. When using OLS we find estimates of the supervisor gender effect similar to those in the existing literature. However, when using fixed effects we find no evidence of a supervisor gender effect for women and only a small, marginally significant effect for men. We conclude that existing OLS estimates overstate the importance of the impact of supervisor gender on wages.     

Collusion and Renegotiation in a Principal–Supervisor–Agent Relationship

We describe a principal–supervisor–agent relationship in which agent and supervisor may collude. To prevent collusion, the principal may contract on a noisy signal which is correlated with the occurrence of collusion. When the signal is informative enough, the principal uses it and no collusion occurs in equilibrium. These contracts, however, are ex post inefficient and are only optimal if the principal can commit not to renegotiate. With renegotiation it is never optimal for the principal to prevent collusion and, at the same time, condition contracts on the signal. In fact, when the signal is informative enough collusion occurs in equilibrium.     

The morning after: alcohol misuse and employment problems

Using a rich, recent, and nationally representative longitudinal survey specifically designed to examine alcohol use and associated problems, we investigate the effects of alcohol misuse on a series of understudied and perhaps less common employment problems. Such problems include being fired or laid off from a job, sustained unemployment, and conflicts with a supervisor and/or co-worker. After controlling for time-invariant omitted variables via fixed effects estimation, we find evidence that three measures of alcohol misuse are significantly related to employment problems. The results offer new information on the potential adverse labor market effects of alcohol misuse and shed light on potential mechanisms through which alcohol misuse may impact intensive labor supply and/or wages.     

Supervision and cost efficiency in banking

This paper suggests a link between bank operating efficiency and federal supervisor. Since supervisory priorities can vary by the context in which the supervisor was conceived, resulting differences in supervisory policies and procedures may underlay differences in the operating efficiency of their supervised banks. The effect on bank operating expenses is estimated at the individual bank level for each of four size strata using a translog cost function, controlling for bank characteristics and the impact of scale and scope economies. Results generally support a conclusion that bank operating cost differences exist by supervisor, except in the largest size stratum.The authors gratefully acknowledge helpful comments and suggestions from Seungmook Choi, Cary Collins, Curt Hunter, Bradford D. Jordan, Richard H. Pettway, John D. Stowe, Larry Wall, and Jim Wansley, and others at the University of Missouri and Northern Illinois University.     

构建财政支出绩效监督指标体系的思考

由于缺乏有效的财政支出绩效监督指标体系,目前中国财政支出绩效监督仅仅停留在对部分项目财务指标的检查和效果的评价,而对财政资金的使用效益评价监督不足。因此,构建一套科学、统一和完整的财政支出绩效监督指标体系就显得十分重要。     

主管支持感、主管信任与组织成员间的知识转移效果

针对企业实践中知识转移难的现状,立足于组织内部上下级关系,对组织成员之间的知识转移效果进行了实证研究,认为员工对上级主管支持感的评价程度以及对组织内部主管的信任水平,影响了其知识转移的意愿和效果;而且,员工所认可的主管支持感还通过增强其对主管的信任,间接影响知识转移。这表明,只有当企业重视主管对员工的支持、建立好主管与员工的相互信任与支持关系时,才能够更好地促进知识转移,提高企业的核心竞争力。