Observable Contracts as Commitments: Interdependent Contracts and Moral Hazard

A large literature examines the use of observable and unrenegotiable agency contracts as commitments. These analyses generally impose an ad hoc restriction that contracts cannot be contingent on one another. I relax this restriction and obtain a folk theorem. Unlike earlier folk theorems in this area, the present result applies to agency relationships that have hidden-action problems. Using an example, I also demonstrate that there are settings in which interdependent contracts support a strictly larger set of equilibrium outcomes than do independent contracts. The result highlights the critical need for careful thought about restrictions placed on the set of feasible contracts.     

Vertical Contracts as Strategic Commitments: How are They Enforced?

This paper addresses the strategic commitment value of various price and nonprice vertical contracts. Assuming contract offers are sufficiently public to have strategic importance, we focus on commitment as a necessary and separable condition to be met. The analysis has two components. First, considering the relationship between a monopolist manufacturer and his imperfectly competing retailers, enforcement conditions necessary for alternative vertical contracts to have commitment value are identified in the static (reputation-free) context. It is shown that external help (i.e., enforcement by nonsignatories) is necessary for bilateral minimum resale price maintenance (price floors) and exclusive territory contracts to have commitment value, whereas maximum resale price maintenance (price ceilings) do not require such help (i.e., they are internally enforcing). Second, the paper provides an analysis of the U.S. case law and discusses the empirical validity of the "external enforcement" assumption that is shown to underlie recent proposals to make certain vertical restraints illegal.     

关联并购与业绩承诺可靠性

近年来,我国并购重组市场中标的公司业绩承诺频繁落空的现象引发了资本市场各参与方的关注.利用2009～2019年间A股上市公司的并购交易及其业绩承诺协议履行情况数据,本文研究发现:(1)相比非关联并购,与控股股东存在关联的并购交易中,标的公司业绩承诺可靠性更低,即业绩承诺不达标的可能性更大;(2)机构投资者持股比例越高,...     

Government Size,the Role of Commitments*

We explore the hypothesis that long‐term commitments affect the dynamics of government expenditure. With the aid of a simple median‐voter model we interpret the pattern of increasing‐then‐constant tax rates observed in OECD countries in the second half of the last century: persistence of public expenditure and a lower bound on new interventions will push government size upward, and preferences of the electorate put a halt to this growth at some point. In this view, the fiscal policy variable is seen to consist of only a part of the total expenditure, the rest being predetermined by its past level.     

Promotions in the Spanish Labour Market: Differences by Gender

In this paper we compare the professional careers of women and men in the Spanish labour market. We use a sample from the Encuesta de Estructura, Conciencia y Biografia de Clase (1991) to estimate count data models (negative binomial models) to explain the number of promotions received in the firm, for males and females separately. Then, using the estimated coefficients from these models, we apply a variant of Oaxaca's decomposition approach to divide the gap in average promotions by gender into two parts: one of them due to differences in endowments and the other is associated with differences in the 'return' of such as endowments in terms of opportunities of upward mobility. The findings indicate that women receive fewer promotions than men with the same qualifications due to differential treatment in the market.     

并购中的业绩承诺条款与股价崩盘风险

本文以2008—2016年有业绩承诺的A股上市公司为样本,研究了并购中业绩补偿承诺条款的设置与兑现对并购业绩的影响,以及并购业绩未达预期产生的经济后果。研究发现,设定高增长率的业绩目标对并购业绩完成具有负面作用,采用股份补偿、非累计补偿、减值测试补偿以及双向业绩对赌对并购业绩实现具有积极作用。在承诺兑现过程中,承诺后期业绩目标压力更大,业绩完成率更低。在业绩承诺完成的经济后果方面,本文发现,未完成业绩承诺的并购相对于完成承诺的并购具有更高的股价崩盘风险,进行盈余管理的并购相对于未进行盈余管理的并购具有更高的股价崩盘风险。     

Models of Competitive Price Promotions: Some Empirical Evidence from the Coffee and Saltine Crackers Markets

I present tests of a competitive rationale for price promotions. In a model with a population of informed and uninformed customers, price competition yields a static equilibrium in which each seller draws a price from a specified density function. Price data on coffee and saltine crackers products are used to test whether the sample of prices on each product could have possibly come from the theoretically specified density function. The results suggest that some markets are indeed consistent with the marginal distributions of prices predicted by the model. Furthermore, in the process of testing this rationale for price promotions, estimates are obtained for the marginal cost of each product, the number of competing goods, and the percentage of informed consumers. The resulting excess variability of these estimates across competing brands can also raise questions with respect to the empirical validity of the model.     

Employees' Nonwork Obligations and Organizational Commitments: A New Way to Look at the Relationships

The authors 1 adopted a family resource view of nonwork obligations and examined these obligations' relationships to dimensions of employees' organizational commitment. Complex interactions were found between employees' marital status, number of children, and having relatives nearby as related to the continuance dimension, but not the affective dimension, of commitment. In particular, results were strongest when the focus was on employees' perceptions of whether they would experience a high personal sacrifice if they were to leave their organizations. These findings are discussed in the context of developing family‐friendly human resource programs that may help employees feel less “trapped” in organizations. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Overestimation and Venture Survival: An Empirical Analysis of Development Commitments in International Master Franchising Ventures

Many international master franchising contracts include "development commitments," clauses specifying a number of units that master franchisees must develop in exchange for exclusive rights to an assigned market, typically their entire home nation. I analyze 142 contracts with development commitments signed by US fast food franchisors and their master franchisees. Several empirical regularities emerge from the analysis: First, the development commitments are large and rarely completely fulfilled. Second, a robust negative relationship exists between survival and development commitment size. Further, ventures with larger commitments exhibit a lower level of investment still productive at the end of the development period. Various explanations for these regularities are considered.     

中日诺贝尔获奖对改进中国式教育的启示价值

日本作为二战中受破坏最大的国家之一,在短短的几十年内,实现了经济腾飞和各方面的飞速进步,特别是教育文化方面,这些都体现在诺贝尔奖项获得上的大放异彩。与日本相对比,中国的现状有着明显的不同和不足,而改善这些不足,完善中国式教育,正是科学文化教育发展的重要步骤。