Respondable risk and incentives for CEOs: The role of information-collection and decision-making

This paper examines the incentive provision when the agent can respond to risk by exerting effort to collect information about the underlying state and making corresponding decisions. Such effort is shown to be more valuable in a riskier environment and incentives can increase with “respondable” risk. The relation between incentives and risk is more positive when the agent's effort is more effective in collecting information or in acting upon it. Using data on chief executive officers (CEOs), I find that incentives for CEOs increase with industry-wide risk, a measure of respondable risk. The positive relation diminishes when the CEO is less able to collect information or is less effective in acting upon it.     

Public procurement in times of crisis: The bundling decision reconsidered

The government wants two tasks to be performed. In each task, unobservable effort can be exerted by a wealth-constrained private contractor. If the government faces no binding budget constraints, it is optimal to bundle the tasks. The contractor in charge of both tasks then gets a bonus payment if and only if both tasks are successful. Yet, if the government has only a limited budget, it may be optimal to separate the tasks, so that there are two contractors each in charge of one task. In this case, high efforts in both tasks can be implemented with smaller bonus payments.     

Optimal contracting with dynastic altruism: Family size and per capita consumption

We use a Barro–Becker model of endogenous fertility, in which parents are subject to idiosyncratic shocks that are private information (either to labor productivity or taste for leisure), to study the efficient degree of consumption inequality in the long run. The planner uses the trade-off between family size and future consumption and leisure, to provide incentives for workers to reveal their shocks. We show that in this environment, the optimal dynamic contract no longer features immiseration in consumption. We also discuss the implications of the model on the long run properties of family size in the optimal contract and show that the long run trend in dynasty size can be either positive or negative depending on parameters.     

朱鎔基副总理谈办好企业问题

朱鎔基副总理谈办好企业问题第一，抑制通货膨胀是今年经济工作的首要任务。企业管理、改革工作必须明确抑制通货膨胀是处理好改革、发展和稳定三者关系的关键。搞市场经济，市场形势好时，企业赚了钱，要去补充自有资金，用来进行技术改造，而不是去铺摊子、大发奖金，最...     

对《国标》中旅游评价赋分标准的思考

旅游资源是旅游业发展的基础,旅游资源的分类、调查、评价是旅游业发展过程中的重要环节,也是旅游资源开发的基础和前提。国家标准GB／T18972-2003《旅游资源分类、调查和评价》的制定与推行,为地方旅游的发展提供了规范性的文本,各级旅游部门都以此为依据开展工作,但各地在应用的过程中。也发现该标准存在诸多问题．从旅游规划实践中的旅游资源评价出发,运用对比分析方法及文献资料法,对《国标》中旅游评价赋分标准存在的若干问题进行了分析,认为《国标》中存在主观性、局限性及不完善性,在此基础上．提出了对其进行改进的建议．     

A dynamic theory of war and peace

In every period, an aggressive country seeks concessions from a non-aggressive country with private information about their cost. The aggressive country can force concessions via war, and both countries suffer from limited commitment. We characterize the efficient sequential equilibria. We show that war is necessary to sustain peace and that temporary wars can emerge because of the coarseness of public information. In the long run, temporary wars can be sustained only if countries are patient, if the cost of war is large, and if the cost of concessions is low.     

Profiting in the info-coms industry in the age of broadband: Lessons and new considerations

Who profits in the info-coms industry in the broadband age, and how? This paper looks at this question by considering broadband as quite a broad phenomenon, including both the most important focus in the current evolution of the Internet, high speed access, and the new services created. We focus on two key stylized facts: SF1: “R&D and patent licensing are increasingly high in this industry, but the initiators of innovations have greatly changed over time”, and SF2: “Small, facilities-less companies contributed to the development of the Internet industry, but have generally performed badly as the industry has matured and broadband use has become widespread”. The paper uses the approach developed by Teece (1986) which analyses strategies of integration, collaboration, licensing and public policy in the presence of technological innovation. These organizational strategies, in practice, are not all profitable and, as Teece correctly stressed as a general principle, their success appears to depend to a great extent on whether they are initiated by innovators or imitators, and how they are articulated within a) regimes of appropriability, b) dominant design issues, and c) complementary assets access. The paper analyses the robustness of Teece (1986), which over the last twenty years has greatly influenced research in economic organization and business strategy on the issue of profiting from innovation, in its ability to provide a framework appropriate to the changes that have occurred in the broadband industry. The paper draws some lessons, and provides some new considerations related to the robustness of Teece's framework. The framework appears robust on SF1: innovators globally have won, though some of them (the best innovators) were acquired by imitators. On SF2, again the innovators have won, but the only success strategy (vertical integration) was only attainable for the largest ISPs/IAPs. We conclude, therefore, that there are many lessons that can be drawn from Teece's framework, though further work should be done on two essential topics: deeper analysis of the sources of technology provision, and investigation of the role of firm heterogeneity.     

以标准化为基石开拓创新测试技术——以眼点模拟仪的自主研制为例

眼点模拟仪是模拟人眼进行汽车后视镜及内视镜测量的必用设备,为了满足最新颁布的GB15084-2013《机动车辆间接视野装置性能和安装要求》标准对于测量设备发光量及视野等要求,解决原有测量设备体积较大、重量较大、定位精度低、使用不便等问题,自主研制了一种新型的、功能更加齐全的、工作稳定性更高的眼点模拟仪.     

Optimal Forestry Contracts under Asymmetry of Information

In this paper, I analyze optimal royalty contracts in forestry when the harvesting firm has private information on the cost of harvesting. This infinite horizon forest rotation model with asymmetry of information on the cost parameter results in a dynamic incentive problem. Depending on whether the costs are correlated over time or not, the firm either receives rent or receives no rent, associated with the continuation part of the rotation choice. I characterize the optimal contract explicitly in both cases. I also examine the loss in expected welfare surplus resulting from the use of a linear contract instead of the more general non‐linear contract.     

Linguistics and Economics: Is Entrepreneurship Innate?

One of the great scientific achievements of the second half of the twentieth century was the advance in linguistics. Noam Chomsky was one of its foremost exponents. Chomsky and his followers claim that human beings have an inbuilt ‘language acquisition device’ which allows children to acquire language with extraordinary ease. Language is as much part of human nature as flying is that of birds. This paper argues that, like language, the propensity to trade is an inbuilt characteristic of human beings. Language permeates all human faculties including the ability to plan for the future. As a result human economic activity shares many important features with language, in particular its recursive and unbounded character. There is also evidence that the concept of property is innate. It follows that attempts to frustrate or limit the exercise of property rights and their use in trade works against the grain of human nature. Limits on the natural expression of entrepreneurship may be as damaging as other constraints on human flourishing.