Monitoring a common agent: Implications for financial contracting

Multiple principals want to obtain income from a privately informed agent and design their contracts non-cooperatively. The degree of coordination between principals shapes the contracts and affects the amount of monitoring. Equity-like contracts and excessive monitoring emerge when principals coordinate or verify each other's monitoring efforts. When this is not possible, free riding weakens monitoring incentives, so that flat payments, debt-like contracts, and very low levels of monitoring appear. Free riding may be so strong to induce even less monitoring than if the principals cooperated with each other; that is, non-cooperative monitoring does not necessarily lead to excessive monitoring.     

主动监控模式及其在公路桥梁施工中的应用研究

现有施工监理模式强调事后监督和检查,是一种被动监控模式。在全面分析PDCA循环及现代质量管理理论的基础上,提出了主动监控模式,并对该模式进行了机理分析。该模式是一种基于事先监控的预防性监控模式,更加重视施工组织设计及施工计划对质量的影响。将监控环节提前开始进行,并强调督导结合、以导为主,能弥补被动监控模式的不足。在对现有监理制度中代建型监理模式、FIDIC监理模式特征进行分析评价的基础上,提出了基于主动监控模式的监理制度设计,并通过案例分析介绍了该模式在复杂公路桥梁施工中的应用。     

面向科技智库的科技创新政策监测体系构建研究

科技创新政策研究是科技智库的核心职责之一，科技创新政策监测是开展科技创新政策研究的基本工具和手段，但目前针对科技创新政策监测体系的系统研究却不多。针对科技创新政策研究需求，创新性地以科技创新政策监测体系为研究对象，系统分析科技创新政策监测对象的范畴、科技创新政策监测的主要方法、科技创新政策智能监测的系统功能、科技创新政策监测的产品设计，可为相关科技智库机构开展科技创新政策研究提供一套具备操作性的研究模式，为后续科技创新政策监测研究提供有益借鉴。     

面向科技智库的科技创新政策监测体系构建研究

科技创新政策研究是科技智库的核心职责之一，科技创新政策监测是开展科技创新政策研究的基本工具和手段，但目前针对科技创新政策监测体系的系统研究却不多。针对科技创新政策研究需求，创新性地以科技创新政策监测体系为研究对象，系统分析科技创新政策监测对象的范畴、科技创新政策监测的主要方法、科技创新政策智能监测的系统功能、科技创新政策监测的产品设计，可为相关科技智库机构开展科技创新政策研究提供一套具备操作性的研究模式，为后续科技创新政策监测研究提供有益借鉴。     

家族化水平、大股东监督与公司绩效

本文将家族化水平、大股东监督与公司绩效纳入一个统一的框架体系进行研究。建立了在不同的家族化管理水平下．大股东监督对公司绩效影响的模型．并以2004年深、沪324家家族控股上市公司为样本进行实证检验。研究结果表明．大股东监督对公司绩效作用的强弱受到家族化管理水平高低的影响。     

中药不良反应监测发展状况与案例分析

背景中药临床应用的安全性受到社会越来越广泛的关注,如何有效加强中药不良反应监测是卫生主管部门、制药企业及医疗机构无法回避的课题。目的剖析中药不良反应监测的现状,并探讨中药不良反应监测今后的发展方向。方法综合涉及中药不良反应监测的数据和文献报告,并以香雪抗病毒口服液不良反应/事件监测研究作为范例进行分析。结果中药不良反应监测有了明显进步,但中药注射制剂与口服制剂之间存在巨大反差,企业对于口服中药制剂临床用药的风险防范意识薄弱,缺乏主动性。结论中药口服制剂的不良反应监测应得到充分重视,而制药企业应加强产品的不良反应监测研究,切实提高社会卫生保障能力和水平。     

基于RS的土地动态监测方法和应用

文章从研究方法的角度来认识遥感在土地利用动态监测中的应用.首先通过对我国土地利用遥感动态监测发展趋势的分析,比较了土地利用动态监测的几种方法,再重点阐述了遥感方法及其他新技术监测方法在土地利用动态监测中的研究和运用,指出遥感、地理信息系统、全球定位系统等新技术的集成运用是动态监测工作的发展趋势.     

Board monitoring,firm risk,and external regulation

We examine the relationship between board monitoring and firm characteristics using a broad sample of firms over the 8 year period from 1996 to 2003. We find that board independence and monitoring is negatively related to firm risk in the absence of external regulation. In addition, we find that external regulatory and political pressures affect the level of board monitoring, especially after the increased focus on board composition by the stock exchanges beginning in 1999 and the passage of the 2002 Sarbanes–Oxley Act. We find that the sensitivity of the negative relationship between board monitoring and firm risk decreases in the post 1999 period suggesting that firms have increased board monitoring in response to external regulations. We also find that these external regulations have had an asymmetrical impact on high-risk firm. In our empirical analysis we also control for other factors that affect board monitoring and find that firms in which the CEO has longer tenure and greater equity ownership have less board monitoring activity and that there is a negative relationship between the level of board monitoring and the level of shareholder rights.      

Leverage,managerial monitoring and firm valuation: A simultaneous equation approach

The paper examines how leverage and managerial ownership relate to firm valuation. It is argued that both leverage (which serves as an external monitoring function) and managerial ownership (which serves as an internal monitoring function) affect firm value, while internal monitoring by managers and external monitoring through debt were viewed as substitutes or complements. After controlling for the effect of exogenous variables, the results reveal the existence of a substitution monitoring effect between debt and the managerial group. Additionally, firm valuation is found to exert a significant influence on managerial ownership and vice versa. Robustness tests indicate a weak but growing role of bank debt as a disciplinary mechanism.     

Environmental regulatory enforcement with “green” consumers

We consider a standard probabilistic model of random monitoring to analyze the interactions between a firm and a monitoring agency in the presence of “green” consumers when compliance payoffs are contingent on monitoring and monitoring costs are shared by the monitoring agency and the firm. When the amount paid by the firms if monitored is exogenously fixed, we find that full compliance is implemented with a finite fine. If there is an upper bound for the fine and the regulator determines endogenously the fine and the amount paid by the firms if monitored, we find that full compliance is also achieved, although the optimal fine is now set at its maximum level. The optimal amount paid by the firms if monitored is lower than the environmental premium the compliant firm gets.The author thanks two anonymous referees for their useful comments and suggestions     

Monitoring as a partially observable decision problem

Monitoring is an important and costly activity in resource management problems such as containing invasive species, protecting endangered species, preventing soil erosion, and regulating contracts for environmental services. Recent studies have viewed optimal monitoring as a Partially Observable Markov Decision Process (POMDP), which provides a framework for sequential decision making under stochastic resource dynamics and uncertainty about the resource state. We present an overview of the POMDP framework and its applications to resource monitoring. We discuss the concept of the information content provided by monitoring systems and illustrate how information content affects optimal monitoring strategies. Finally, we demonstrate how the timing of monitoring in relation to resource treatment and transition can have substantial effects on optimal monitoring strategies.     

Repeated Games with Almost-Public Monitoring

In repeated games with imperfect public monitoring, players can use public signals to coordinate their behavior, and thus support cooperative outcomes, but with private monitoring, such coordination may no longer be possible. Even though grim trigger is a perfect public equilibrium (PPE) in games with public monitoring, it often fails to be an equilibrium in arbitrarily close games with private monitoring. If a PPE has players' behavior conditioned only on finite histories, then it induces an equilibrium in all close-by games with private monitoring. This implies a folk theorem for repeated games with almost-public almost-perfect monitoring. Journal of Economic Literature Classification Numbers: C72, C73.     

Concealment of risk and regulation of bank risk taking

This paper analyzes the effectiveness of banking regulation when risk can be concealed from the regulator. Three banking regimes are considered: regulation with direct controls, incentives-based regulation, and laissez-faire banking. The relative performance of the three regimes depends on the effectiveness of monitoring. Regulation with direct controls is superior when monitoring effectiveness is low, while incentives-based regulation is superior when monitoring effectiveness is high. Laissez-faire banking is equivalent to incentives-based regulation if market analysts and the regulator have access to the same information. When monitoring effectiveness is low, a regulator with direct controls can better restrain banks' risk taking than can the market; this result applies when banks can conceal much of their risk from the regulator.     

Folk theorems with bounded recall under (almost) perfect monitoring

We prove the perfect-monitoring folk theorem continues to hold when attention is restricted to strategies with bounded recall and the equilibrium is essentially required to be strict. As a consequence, the perfect monitoring folk theorem is shown to be behaviorally robust under almost-perfect almost-public monitoring. That is, the same specification of behavior continues to be an equilibrium when the monitoring is perturbed from perfect to highly-correlated private.     

Optimal control of an invasive species with imperfect information about the level of infestation

The presence of invasive species is often not realized until well after the species becomes established. Discovering the location and extent of infestation before the invasive species causes widespread damage typically requires intensive monitoring efforts. In this paper, we analyze the problem of controlling an invasive species when there is imperfect information about the degree of infestation. We model the problem as a partially observable Markov decision process in which the decision-maker receives an imperfect signal about the level of infestation. The decision-maker then chooses a management action to minimize expected costs based on beliefs about the level of infestation. We apply this model to a simple application with three possible levels of infestation where the decision-maker can choose to take no action, only monitor, only treat, or do both monitoring and treatment jointly. We solve for optimal management as a function of beliefs about the level of infestation. For a case with positive monitoring and treatment costs, we find that the optimal policy involves choosing no action when there is a sufficiently large probability of no infestation, monitoring alone with intermediate probability values and treatment alone when the probability of moderate or high infestation is large. We also show how optimal management and expected costs change as the cost or quality of information from monitoring changes. With costless and perfect monitoring, expected costs are 20–30% lower across the range of belief states relative to the expected costs without monitoring.     

关于我国森林公园生态环境教育及其保护的对策思考——以张家界国家森林公园为例

在我国森林公园是森林旅游的主要载体,张家界国家森林公园是我国第一个森林公园,经过20多年的发展,已成为国内外知名的旅游景区。然而,由于长期以来我国旅游业“重发展,轻保护”的错误思想,导致公园旅游从业人员及管理人员生态环境意识的薄弱,公园内的生态环境教育及保护措施缺乏,环境监测、生物多样性监测、旅游发展监测和游客体验监测等生态环境保护的科研支持体系更是空白。通过建立旅游从业人员培训制度,建立森林公园环境解译系统,建立环境监测体系、生物多样性监测、旅游发展监测和游客体验监测体系对张家界国家森林公园的生态环境教育及生态环境保护的科研体系提出了建议。     

STRUCTURAL EMPIRICAL EVALUATION OF JOB SEARCH MONITORING

To evaluate search effort monitoring of unemployed workers, it is important to take account of post‐unemployment wages and job‐to‐job mobility. We structurally estimate a model with search channels, using a controlled trial in which monitoring is randomized. The data include registers and survey data on search behavior. We find that the opportunity to move to better‐paid jobs in employment reduces the extent to which monitoring induces substitution toward formal search channels in unemployment. Job mobility compensates for adverse long‐run effects of monitoring on wages. We examine counterfactual policies against moral hazard, like reemployment bonuses and changes of the benefits path.     

Environmental quality and welfare effects of improving the reporting capability of citizen monitoring schemes

Public participation in environmental monitoring to alert regulators to possible non-compliance events has been credited with improving environmental quality and regulatory efficiency. At the same time, the reporting capability of such citizen monitoring schemes is known to be limited due to technical and organizational deficiencies. Recent enthusiasm for outside interventions that address these deficiencies in order to lower environmental harm and raise overall welfare therefore seems justified. A game-theoretic analysis of a monitoring and enforcement regime with citizen monitoring shows, however, that the effects of such interventions are likely to be subtle. A higher reporting capability of citizens involves substitution effects that have ambiguous effects on the regulator??s monitoring and enforcement costs: Welfare can actually decline and environmental improvements will fall short of expectations. In an extreme scenario we show that improved citizen monitoring can even have adverse effects on environmental quality.     

Does monitoring decrease work effort?: The complementarity between agency and crowding-out theories

Agency theory assumes that tighter monitoring by the principal should motivate agents to increase their effort, whereas the “crowding-out” literature suggests that the opposite may occur. These two assertions are not necessarily contradictory provided that the nature of the employment relationship is taken into account [Frey, B., 1993. Does monitoring increase work effort? The rivalry between trust and loyalty. Econ. Inquiry 31, 663–670]. Results from controlled laboratory experiments show that many principals engage in costly monitoring, and most agents react to the disciplining effect of monitoring by increasing effort. However, we also find some evidence that effort is crowded out when monitoring is above a certain threshold. We identify that both interpersonal principal–agent links and concerns for the distribution of output payoff are important for the emergence of this crowding-out effect.