Vetoes Overridable by Simple Majorities

Conventional wisdom has it that the absolute (purely negative) veto is ineffective when overridable by a simple majority. That is flatly false. The examples that prove this surprising fact are themselves surprisingly ordinary yet oddly resistant to direct observation. They reveal virtues of a neglected institutional design.JEL classification: D71, D72     

大熊市背景下的中国上市公司股利政策现状反思

上市公司的股利政策直接影响公司的运营及发展前景,同时也影响到股东的直接利益。中国上市公司在大熊市(2007-2012年)背景下,需要权衡各种利弊,在各方压力中寻找利益的平衡点,制定合理的股利政策,更好地发挥股利政策应有的重要作用。     

Why is change so slow? Assessing prospects for United Nations Security Council reform

The article explores how changed patterns of UN membership affected the prospects for UN Security Council institutional reform. First, we outline a theoretical framework based on path dependency, veto player analysis and social choice theory. Second, we offer calculations of decision probability and show that a higher voting threshold lowers chances of winning coalitions in a non-linear fashion. Third, we explore the specific decision-making procedures for UNSC reform and which actors can block reform. We conclude that not only diverging preferences, but that hurdles established early on combined with membership growth have ‘locked in’ the current institutional arrangement.     

Fiscal Constitutions

We study the impact of fiscal constitutions on intergenerational transfers in an overlapping generation model with linear technology. Transfers represent outcomes of a voting game among selfish agents. Policies are decided one period at a time. Majoritarian systems, which accord voters maximum fiscal discretion, sustain all individually rational allocations, including dynamically inefficient ones. Constitutional rules, which give minorities veto power over fiscal policy changes proposed by the majority, are equivalent to precommitment. These rules eliminate fluctuating and dynamically inefficient transfers and sustain weakly increasing transfer sequences that converge to the golden rule. The golden rule allocation is the unique outcome of Markov constitutional rules. Journal of Economic Literature Classification Numbers: D72, H55.     

ST公司的治理“病因”与“康复”之策

股权结构严重失衡、最终控制人产权不清、管理层薪酬与绩效脱节等问题是ST公司治理水平落后、经营绩效低下的主要原因。完善股权制衡机制、规范薪酬奖励、强化产权对经营者的正向约束、优化委托代理关系是ST公司完善公司治理、摆脱经营困境的必由之路。     

地方政府投资中的冲动与拖延——中国经济过热的一个行为经济学解释

我国地方政府由于任期制等原因而形成"短视"认知偏差,过分注重项目的短期收益状况,从而会表现出对能带来大量即期收益的"政绩工程"类项目的投资冲动和对需要大量即期成本支付的环保类项目的投资拖延。以此可以部分地解析地方政府过度投资在我国历次经济过热中的作用机制。绿色GDP的提倡和一票否决制度作为中央政府对地方政府投资的反偏差干预手段,也可在此框架内得到统一的逻辑解释。     

Large economies and two-player games

We characterize the core and the competitive allocations of a continuum economy as strong Nash equilibria of an associated game with only two players.     

The influence of group size on distributional fairness under voting by veto

Voting by Veto [VBV], developed by Dennis C. Mueller, is a two-stage voting mechanism for committee decision making. In the first stage, every member of the committee makes a proposal. The proposals are joined with the current status quo (or another fallback option). For the second stage, a random mechanism determines the order of voting and the committee members sequentially eliminate one alternative each. After every committee member has exercised her veto, a single winning alternative remains. Game theory predicts that the equality of the resulting distribution under VBV varies with group size. Hence, decisions in two-member groups should result in highly unequal distributions of benefits. With increasing group size, however, VBV should generate more equally distributed outcomes. We examine the effect of group size under VBV in a series of laboratory experiments where groups with a varying number of members play a ‘divide the dollar game’. Our results confirm that larger groups choose more equal distributions than smaller groups. However, we also find deviations from the model's predictions. Some committees in our experiment do not select Pareto-optimal alternatives. An exploratory analysis of possible explanations suggests that individual behavior is most likely motivated by a combination of material self-interest and social preferences such as reciprocity and fairness.