Unobservable Contracts as Precommitments

It is well known that signing publicly observable contracts with third parties is a means of credibly committing to certain actions and hence may yield strategic advantages. Previous work on the commitment value of unobservable contracts has been limited to normal form games and extensive form games in which only one party has the option to sign a contract. In this paper, we extend the analysis to extensive form games in which both players can sign contracts, and characterize the set of sequential equilibria. We show that any Nash equilibrium outcome of the original game in which both players receive more than their individually rational payoffs can be supported as a sequential equilibrium outcome. Therefore, delegation acts not only as a commitment device to gain advantage over the opponent, but also as a cooperative device to attain Pareto improvements over the subgame perfect equilibrium outcome. I would like to thank Atila Abdulkadiroglu, Jean-Pierre Benoit, Alberto Bisin, Boyan Jovanovic, Ehud Kalai, Giuseppe Lopomo, George Mailath, Efe Ok, Ariel Rubinstein, Andy Schotter, seminar participants at various universities and conferences, and anonymous referees for helpful comments and suggestions. Support from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and Program for Economic Research at Columbia University is also gratefully acknowledged.     

Community–Industry Contracting over Natural Resource use in a Context of Weak Property Rights: The Case of Indonesia

Decentralization in Indonesia has resulted in an increased influence of local communities over the terms of logging agreements with timber companies. The outcomes of such community–company negotiations vary significantly across communities. What are the conditions that cause this variation, and how can the outcomes be more effectively and efficiently influenced by third-party actors such as the local government or NGOs? This paper addresses these questions by developing a game-theoretic model to illustrate the strategic interactions between communities and companies. The model allows for endogeneity of de facto property rights and bargaining positions. We show that third-party actions to improve the community’s bargaining position by raising its reservation utility may result in an increase in the area logged and thereby harm the environment. Our results indicate that the strategy of intervention matters. In particular, strategies that raise the sensitivity of interventions to local logging threats are likely to be more cost-effective in supporting communities and reducing forest degradation than more indiscriminatory strategies. The model will be relevant to other situations where communities negotiate contracts over natural resource use with outside actors in a context of weak property rights, a situation increasingly observed in other developing countries.     

Alternative Models of Recreational Off-Highway Vehicle Site Demand

A controversial recreation activity is off-highway vehicle use. Off-highway vehicle use is controversial because it is incompatible with most other activities and is extremely hard on natural eco-systems. This study estimates utility theoretic incomplete demand systems for four off-highway vehicle sites. Since two sets of restrictions are equally consistent with utility theory both are imposed and the best fitting restrictions are identified using Voung’s non-nested testing scheme. The demand system is modeled using both Poisson and negative binomial II distributions. Data are provided by a survey conducted at four recreational off-highway vehicle (OHV) sites in western North Carolina.     

Firm-provided training and temporary contracts

This paper analyses the relationship between workers type of contract and the probability of receiving firm-provided training. In particular, we raise the following question: do workers with temporary contracts face the same probability of receiving training as workers with permanent contracts, once we account for the fact that both types of workers have different probabilities of being employed in a firm providing training? The results from our empirical analysis using data from the Spanish labour market suggest that workers with temporary contracts not only are less likely to be employed in training firms but, once they are in those firms, they also have a lower probability of being chosen to participate in firm-provided training activities.JEL Classification: J23, M53Authors gratefully acknowledge financial support from Universidad de Alcalá under research project La relación entre temporalidad y formación en la empresa: un análisis comparativo entre los países de la Unión Europea (award no. UAH2002/022) and from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Technology under research project Observatorio del mercado de trabajo (SEC2001-0061). We have also benefited from our participation in the research project Estudio sobre la situación actual de la contratación temporal e indefinida en España financed by the Spanish Employment Office (INEM). We are grateful to participants in the XXVII Simposio de Análisis Económico (Salamanca), V Jornadas de Economía Laboral (Reus-Tarragona), and a seminar in the Istituto de Ricerca Sociale (Milano), and to one anonymous referee. The usual disclaimer applies.     

不完全信息下贝叶斯纳什均衡的转化

本文从古诺特模型的一般分析出发,在完全信息和不完全信息两种条件下分别得出厂商各自的均衡利润,然后通过比较两种均衡下的利润大小去分析不完全信息条件下的均衡转化问题.之后把此结果推向一般情况,进一步分析了不完全信息贝叶斯纳什均衡向完全信息纳什均衡转化的条件以及其结论的意义.     

论心理契约、企业意识形态与企业激励机制构建的新思考

本文通过心理契约与企业意识形态内在联系的分析,一方面对国外目前基于心理契约概念认定上所存在的“Rousseau学派”与“古典学派”的争端的解决出路提供了一种初步的尝试办法,另一方面则为国内企业文化的研究提供了一种心理学的分析基础,从而也为企业激励机制的构建提供了一种新的思路。     

论企业财务治理结构!

本文从契约理论的角度分析了企业财务治理结构的本质,指出财务治理结构实质上是企业财权配置的特别契约;并从企业财权配置入手,分析了企业财务治理逻辑的演变过程;在此基础上,提出建立利益相关者共同治理逻辑下的共同治理和相机治理相结合的财务治理结构;并针对企业财务治理中存在的问题提出了完善措施。     

基于合约化质量管理框架下的质量创新模式研究

本文首先从现代合约理论出发，对传统质量概念中的合约化内涵进行发掘和深化，并进一步对质量合约的风险特征及原理进行讨论。在此基础上，进行质量创新理论的探析，研究表明：绝对质量价值管理、相对质量价值管理和证券化质量价值管理都是基于合约化质量理念下的质量创新的新模式——质量价值管理的三种形态，是在不同的竞争环境、不同的发展时期、具有不同质量风险特征的企业的不同选择而已。但从质量风险收益来看，证券化质量价值管理代表着质量创新模式的发展方向。     

Public Disclosure of Forward Contracts and Revelation of Proprietary Information

Financial executives of firms engaged in forward contracting have raised concerns that mandated disclosure of those contracts would reveal proprietary information to rival firms. This paper considers the basis for those concerns in the framework of a duopoly in which one privately informed producer enters the forward market prior to production. In choosing its forward position, the firm considers the effects of that position on the forward price and second stage product market competition with its rival. Two regimes are considered: mandated disclosure and no disclosure. Under the former, the contracting firm faces a tension between exploiting its information advantage in the forward market and attempting to influence the production decision of its rival. On average, in equilibrium, the contracting firm gains a first-mover advantage, but at the cost of revealing its private information to its rival and extracting less expected gains from uninformed forward market participants. In contrast, with no disclosure, the contracting firm cannot influence rival firm beliefs, but extracts more expected gains from its private information in both the forward and product markets. On balance, the contracting firm prefers no disclosure. Moreover, parameterizations exist such that the rival also prefers that regime. These findings explain the opposition of respondents to draft proposals of Statement of Financial Standards No. 133.     

Determinants of executive compensation in privately held firms

We examine what determines executive compensation in privately held firms. Our study is motivated by the fact that most studies in this area rely on data from publicly traded firms. Further, the few studies that are based on data from privately held firms only examine a limited number of determinants of executive compensation. Our findings indicate that the pay‐to‐performance relation is weak. Board size and ownership concentration are the only corporate governance characteristics that explain variations in executive compensation. Executive characteristics like skills, title and educational attainment all explain variations in executive compensation. Contrary to our expectations, we do not find a stronger pay‐to‐performance relation in firms with better designed bonus plans.