要素市场扭曲对企业家寻租及创新的影响

Baumol认为企业家行为模式受到所在制度环境的影响,良好的制度环境会促进企业家从事增加社会福利的生产性活动,比如创新;而制度环境不佳会导致企业家从事攫取社会利益的非生产性活动,比如寻租。Baumol的企业家才能配置理论在中国具体情境中,是否有其适用性？以我国2009-2014年省级层面面板数据,利用各省份人均土地出让面积作为地区要素市场扭曲的工具变量,在有效控制内生性可能导致的模型估计偏误后,实证考察了要素市场扭曲对企业家寻租活动的作用效应。研究发现,转轨时期我国地区要素市场扭曲程度越深,企业家寻租活动就越多。进一步通过系数检验以及Bootstrap方法考察企业家寻租活动在地区要素市场扭曲和企业创新强度之间的中介效应,证实了“要素市场扭曲→企业家寻租活动增多→企业创新强度减弱”传导机制的存在,可为深化中国要素市场机制改革提供理论和实证支持。     

Corruption and industrial dualism in less developed countries

This paper provides an explanation for the observation that developing countries tend to have a higher degree of dualism in the size distribution of firms and a relatively smaller proportion of large firms than do developed countries. This paper builds a model where large 'formal' firms attract rent seeking activities from the government while small firms do not. In the model, there exists a 'competitive fringe' of small firms and a formal market consisting of Cournot competitors. The number of formal firms is made endogenous and is a function of the degree to which the government can extract rents. This ability to extract rents is itself posited as a function of the degree of corruption in a country's government. Thus, it is the high degree of corruption in developing country governments that contributes to the dual nature of their industrial structure. The model predicts that the higher the degree of corruption, the fewer (and larger) are the formal firms, the lower is social welfare and the greater is dead-weight loss, and the higher are government rents. An examination of the size distribution of 16 countries and their degree of corruption shows that the degree of corruption is a good predictor of the percentage of large firms in an economy.     

Human capital and wages in exporting firms

This paper studies the link between the education level of workers, export performance and wages. We argue that firms may escape intense competition in international markets by using high skilled workers to differentiate their products. This story is consistent with our empirical results. Using a very rich matched worker-firm longitudinal dataset, we find that there is a weak negative direct effect of exporting on wages, but an interaction term between export intensity and skill intensity has a positive impact on wages. That is, we find an export wage premium, but only in firms where the skill intensity is sufficiently high.     

The dynamics of within-group and between-group interaction

The article strengthens and provides a dynamic extension of the theory on collective rent seeking and private provision of a public good. Each individual agent within each group chooses in continuous or discrete time a continuous or discrete effort level. The combined effort within each group provides within-group public goods which are used as an input in the between-group n-group competition for an external prize. Intergroup mobility and intergroup warfare are allowed for. Each group and each individual agent within each group get a fraction of the prize based on a linear combination of equity and relative effort. A model/algorithm is developed generating analytical results and simulations illustrating how the interaction within and between groups proceeds through time.     

How do US investors perceive the risk of local political corruption? Evidence from acquisition announcement

This study examines the impact of local political corruption on investors’ evaluation of firms’ mergers and acquisitions (M&As) in the US. Using the number of corruption convictions of government officials reported by the US Department of Justice, we find that acquirers in more corrupt court districts experience lower acquirer announcement returns, lower combined acquirer and target announcement returns, and are less likely to complete acquisitions. We further find that the relation between local political corruption and acquirer announcement returns is worsened when acquirers operate primarily in the headquarters state. Overall, the results suggest that local political corruption has an adverse impact on investors’ evaluation of a firm’s M&A profitability.     

Does political connection distort competition and encourage corporate risk taking? International evidence

We investigate the impact of political connection on corporate risk-taking by connected firms, their industry counterparts, as well as non-rival firms from 48 countries. We find that political connection induces higher risk taking by connected firms. By contrast, we do not find evidence that political connection, with the attendant potential competitive distortions in the industry, induces higher risk taking by competitors. We focus on non-financial industries. Our results are consistent with the hypothesis that the inability to avail themselves of political rents compels the non-connected rivals to adopt more conservative strategies. However, large rival firms, generally considered to be too-important-to-fail, exhibit evidence of higher risk taking. The top size quartile industry rivals take as much risk as the politically connected firms. The higher risk exhibited by large rivals of politically connected firms suggests that our baseline regression results of lower risk-taking among rivals of politically connected firms are biased upward by firms that would be considered too-big-to-fail. This finding also suggests that the too-big-to fail phenomenon is not unique to banks. Our results are robust to the use of alternative measures of risk, to the exclusion of privatized and state-owned firms, and to controlling for the effects of financial crisis.     

"租购同权"政策对我国大中城市房价的影响研究

根据2014年1月至2019年12月我国35个大中城市的面板数据,运用双重差分模型考量了"租购同权"政策对房价的影响.结果显示:"租购同权"政策不仅能直接有效地抑制试点城市新建商品住房及二手住房房价的增长,还能通过降低房价上涨预期间接平抑房价增长速度,且该政策对不同属性的住房市场及不同建筑面积的住房影响也不同.鉴此,应继续落实"租购同权"政策,大力发展住房租赁市场,增加优质教育资源的供给.     

再售期权、货币幻觉与商品住宅价格泡沫

再售期权和货币幻觉两个因素分别从投资者对未来现金流分布的信念差异和对贴现率估计偏差的角度解释房地产价格泡沫的形成和膨胀。本文以上海商品住宅市场为例,运用动态剩余价值模型从租金房价比角度测度上海房价泡沫水平,并检验再售期权和货币幻觉对上海房价泡沫的解释作用。经验分析发现,上海商品住宅市场存在再售期权和货币幻觉效应,其中货币幻觉效应对房价泡沫影响具有不对称性但解释作用更强,建议应重点关注高通胀和实际负利率对房价泡沫的影响。     

Primary-input intensities under alternative measures of rent content

Different methods for measuring rent (natural-resource) content have been proposed in studies of the primary-input content of trade. In this paper, these methods are applied to obtain different industry-level estimates of the primary-input contents and the primary-input intensities of Argentina's exports of manufactures. The paper then explores the extent to which the choice of method affects these results, the classification and ranking of activities according to primary-input intensities, and Heckscher–Ohlin tests.     

The immiseration of the landlords: rent in a Kaldorian theory of income distribution

This paper incorporates rent within a Kaldorian model of distributionwhere income shares depend on aggregate investment and the propensitiesto save out of profits, rents and wages. The model is used tointerpret the significance of the secular decline in rents asa share of national income and to specify the circumstancesunder which both the capital/output ratio and the wage shareof national income may rise. The author pursues Keynes's suggestiveremarks about land's liquidity value and shows how an increasein the demand for land, by producers, consumers or wealthholdersreduces the rate of profit and therewith the inducement to invest.