SHORT‐RUN POLICY COMMITMENT WHEN INVESTMENT TIMING IS ENDOGENOUS: ‘MORE HARM THAN GOOD?’

In our model, firms choose when to set cost‐reducing investment and the government, which only has short‐run commitment power, sets an output subsidy. We show that firms that delay investment without government intervention have an incentive to invest early under policy activism, strategically underinvesting or overinvesting to obtain larger subsidies. The policy scheme thus creates a new, potentially more harmful, distortion. Under oligopoly, a firm has a weaker incentive to manipulate policy than under monopoly, which makes policy intervention less harmful. We investigate when the government may do better by adhering to laissez‐faire than by engaging in active policy intervention.     

“80”后知识型员工组织承诺行为一致性研究——基于贝叶斯估计模型和因子分析法的实证分析

随着"80后"这一代人走向社会成为企业人力资源的主力军,关于"80后"人员的组织行为研究成为热点。本文数据来自对企业组织中"80后"知识型员工的组织行为的问卷调查,采用因子分析、Bayes估计、Pearson、Spearman相关系数方法对组织承诺和工作绩效的关系进行分析,结果表明:(1)情感承诺与关系绩效和任务绩效存在强的正相关关系;(2)持续承诺对任务绩效有负影响与关系绩效存在弱的正相关关系;(3)规范承诺与关系绩效和任务绩效存在较强的正相关关系。     

Is capital a collusion device?

Summary. We examine how irreversible capital reduces the possibility of a duopoly to sustain implicit collusion by grim strategies, when the product is homogenous and firms compete in quantities. Compared with the case of reversible capital, there are two countervailing effects: Deviation from an existing collusion is less attractive, because capital once installed causes costs forever. But the punishment will also be less severe due to the high capacity the deviating firm can build before punishment starts. The last effect dominates, meaning that the commitment value of capital is negative for all firms. If capital is irreversible, collusion breaks down for realistic magnitudes of interest rates. Received: April 30, 1999; revised version: November 30, 2001     

It's easier to contract than to pay: Judicial independence and US municipal default in the 19th century

It is well established in the literature that an independent judiciary can act as a signal of credibility by a sovereign state and as a guarantor of creditor rights. However, to date there has been little systematic work analyzing how an independent judiciary reacts to fiscal stress and public-sector default. This article addresses that very question by evaluating how and if judicial independence affects default rates using US municipal data through the nineteenth century. Overall, the results do indicate that greater judicial independence is associated with a significantly lower likelihood of default. This channel largely occurs through the method by which a member of a state's court of last resort is selected (either appointment or popular election) and term length.     

Imperfect competition in two-sided matching markets

This paper considers a simple equilibrium model of an imperfectly competitive two-sided matching market. Firms and workers may have heterogeneous preferences over matches on the other side, and the model allows for both uniform and personalized wages or contracts. To make the model tractable, I use the Azevedo and Leshno (2013) framework, in which a finite number of firms is matched to a continuum of workers.In equilibrium, even if wages are exogenous and fixed, firms have incentives to strategically reduce their capacity, to increase the quality of their worker pool. The intensity of incentives to reduce capacity is given by a simple formula, analogous to the classic Cournot model, but depends on different moments of the distribution of preferences. I compare markets with uniform and personalized wages. For fixed quantities, markets with personalized wages always yield higher efficiency than markets with uniform wages, but may be less efficient if firms reduce capacity to avoid bidding too much for star workers.     

并购重组中大股东补偿承诺与中小股东权益保护——基于苏宁环球与世荣兆业的比较案例研究

我们对2007年以来并购重组中大股东盈利补偿的统计发现,补偿方式主要有两种:现金补偿和股份回购(或赠送股份)补偿,而且具有明显的时间特征,即2009年11月之前均采用现金补偿方案,之后基本上采用了股份回购(或赠送股份)的补偿方案。在此基础上,通过上市公司和大股东两个层面分析出两种补偿方案均在一定程度上保护了中小股东的权益,其中,股份回购方案比现金补偿方案更能改善上市公司财务状况和经营业绩,同时更能制约大股东在并购重组活动中对过高评估或过高盈利预测的冲动,因而更能保护中小股东权益。     

Commitment and observability in a contracting environment

This paper examines leader-follower games where a leader must purchase an essential input from a price-setting supplier in order to take an action. We show that equilibrium outcomes when the followers perfectly observe the leaders' actions cannot be approximated by mixed equilibrium outcomes of the game where followers imperfectly observe the leaders' actions, i.e. they are not accessible. Accessibility fails since in a pure strategy equilibrium, a supplier makes positive profits; however in an equilibrium where a leader randomizes, supplier profits must be zero. Our result follows from a generalized indifference principle that mixed strategies must satisfy in economic environments. While supplier profits cannot be approximated, player action profiles are accessible. Our results also apply to games with costly observation.     

Does trade foster contract enforcement?

Contract enforcement is probabilistic, but the probability depends on rules and processes. A stimulus to trade may induce traders to alter rules or processes to improve enforcement. In the model of this paper, such a positive knock-on effect occurs when the elasticity of supply of traders is sufficiently high. Negative knock-on is possible when the elasticity is low. Enforcement strategies in competing markets are complements (substitutes) if the supply of traders is sufficiently elastic (inelastic). The model provides a useful structure of endogenous enforcement that gives promise of explaining patterns of institutional development. Presented to the GEP Conference on ‘New Directions in International Trade Theory’, 8 and 9 June, 2007. An earlier version of this paper under another title was presented to the American Economic Association meetings, January 2004.     

Adverse selection,commitment and exhaustible resource taxation

This paper studies the contractual relationship between a government and a firm in charge of the extraction of an exhaustible resource. Governments design taxation scheme to capture resource rent and they usually propose contracts with limited duration and possess less information on resources than the extractive firms do. This article investigates how information asymmetry on costs and an inability to commit to long-term contracts affect tax revenue and the extraction path. This study gives several unconventional results. First, when information asymmetry exists, the inability to commit does not necessarily lower tax revenues. Second, under asymmetric information without commitment, an efficient firm may produce during the first period more or less than under symmetric information. Hence, the inability to commit has an ambiguous effect on the exhaustion date. Third, the modified Hotelling's rule is such that an increase in the discount factor does not necessarily reduce the first-period extraction.     

Cap and trade policies in the presence of monopoly and distortionary taxation

We extend an analytical general equilibrium model of environmental policy with pre-existing labor tax distortions to include pre-existing monopoly power as well. We show that the existence of monopoly power has two offsetting effects on welfare. First, the environmental policy reduces monopoly profits, and the negative effect on income increases labor supply in a way that partially offsets the pre-existing labor supply distortion. Second, environmental policy raises prices, so interaction with the pre-existing monopoly distortion further exacerbates the labor supply distortion. This second effect is larger, for reasonable parameter values, so the existence of monopoly reduces the welfare gain (or increases the loss) from environmental restrictions.