Bureaucratic Autonomy in the U.S. Separation of Powers: Evidence from Cabinet Departments

Theories of delegation posit that politicians have the incentive to decrease discretion when ideological conflict with an administrative agency increases. Yet agencies can use their expertise to appropriate informational benefits from delegation helping to increase bureaucratic autonomy. Such theories only indirectly address the impact of ideological conflict on bureaucrats’ perceptions about the extent of the discretion they are afforded on the job. Does the perception of discretion by bureaucrats depend on ideological conflicts between the legislative and executive branches? Statistical results from dynamic panel models provide evidence that that closer ideological alignment with the U.S. Congress than the president increases perceived discretion; that a negative relationship emerges between confirmation times and perceived discretion, but a small and opposite relationship exists among supervisory levels; that variance in the ideological portfolio of cabinet secretaries decreases perceived discretion overall, but has no effect on supervisory cadres; and that divergence between the goals and legal context of an agency and the president’s policy orientation are associated with lower perceived discretion.     

R&D成果转让合同履约的定量分析:激励对策与优效设计

R&D(研究与开发)成果向生产力转化难的问题因研发方利益无保障而普遍存在。本文运用经济对策理论和数量分析方法,对R＆D成果转让合同给出定量描述,并在此基础上对实际中常见的三种成果转让情形分别给出了激励受让方履约的合同设计。对三种合同的履约激励相容性给出了证明。对其中两种情形还讨论了使受让方履约与研发方利润最大化或审计成本最小化的双目标优效合同设计,建立了各情形下的双目标激励优效条件。最后通过一个具体例子说明所设计的多期双目标优效合同的可行性及应用。     

When Are Local Incentive Constraints Sufficient?

We study the question of whether local incentive constraints are sufficient to imply full incentive compatibility in a variety of mechanism design settings, allowing for probabilistic mechanisms. We give a unified approach that covers both continuous and discrete type spaces. On many common preference domains—including any convex domain of cardinal or ordinal preferences, single‐peaked ordinal preferences, and successive single‐crossing ordinal preferences—local incentive compatibility (suitably defined) implies full incentive compatibility. On domains of cardinal preferences that satisfy a strong nonconvexity condition, local incentive compatibility is not sufficient. Our sufficiency results hold for dominant‐strategy and Bayesian Nash solution concepts, and allow for some interdependence in preferences.     

Weak Monotonicity Characterizes Deterministic Dominant‐Strategy Implementation

We characterize dominant‐strategy incentive compatibility with multidimensional types. A deterministic social choice function is dominant‐strategy incentive compatible if and only if it is weakly monotone (W‐Mon). The W‐Mon requirement is the following: If changing one agent's type (while keeping the types of other agents fixed) changes the outcome under the social choice function, then the resulting difference in utilities of the new and original outcomes evaluated at the new type of this agent must be no less than this difference in utilities evaluated at the original type of this agent.     

解雇威胁条件下经营者风险分担与激励设计

本文分析了解雇威胁条件下的经营者风险分担和激励设计问题。将企业产出线性函数中的能力因子扩展为经营者的人力资本变量;同时将解雇威胁定量化,把解雇概率植入到参与约束和激励相容约束条件中求得存在解雇威胁时的经营者分成合约分享系数的隐性方程。通过对这些方程的比较静态分析得出努力程度和人力资本变量与分享系数及解雇成本的关系,解释了隐性激励与显性激励之间的替代性,并就如何提高我国经理人市场的隐性激励效率,替代控制权激励并完善相关制度环境提出了政策建议。     

政府行为、股权安排与公司治理的有效性——基于盈余质量视角的研究

本文以我国2000至2005年期间A股上市公司为研究对象,探讨在政府控制的特殊经济环境下,股权安排对会计盈余质量的影响,试图从会计契约角度对公司治理有效性做出新的诠析。本研究发现,控股股东对盈余质量的影响是非线性的,而第二大股东则对控股股东的壕沟防御效应起到有效的遏制作用。研究还发现,在政府行政干预力度加大和内部人利益侵害行为加剧的双重推动下,国有上市公司财务报告质量将进一步被降低。     

土地使用权机制的实现与执行

机制设计者的目的是想最优化一个基于环境参数空间的社会福利函数,但是有关环境参数的相关信息分散于经济之中,因此机制设计者既想收集尽可能多的相关信息,又想充分利用这些信息制定一个社会决策。机制通常在两个框架下讨论,分为实现和执行,两者本质区别在于后者利用了对策性思维方式。本文给出了土地使用权机制在二维信息传递空间下的实现问题,将激励相容条件引入信息有效的机制实现中,给出了占优均衡下的机制执行。研究发现:在实话实说假设下,能够降低信息传递空间维度,并且通过一个信息有效的机制来实现政府目标函数;参与人能够利用私有信息时,实话实说不能成为一个纳什均衡,但在占优均衡下可以通过机制来执行。     

ON THE RELATIVE EFFICIENCY OF PERFORMANCE PAY AND NONCONTINGENT INCENTIVES

We report evidence from a large field experiment that compares the effectiveness of contingent and noncontingent incentives in eliciting costly effort for a large range of payment levels. The company with which we worked sent 7,250 letters asking customers to complete a survey. Some letters promised to pay amounts ranging from $1 to $30 upon compliance (contingent incentives), whereas others already contained the money in the request envelopes (noncontingent incentives). Compared to no payment, very small contingent payments lower the response rate while small noncontingent payments raise the response rate. As expected, response rates rise with the size of the incentive offered. The response rate in the noncontingent incentives rises more rapidly for low amounts of incentive, but then flattens out and reaches lower levels than under contingent payments. We discuss how the optimal policy regarding the use of each size and type of incentives crucially depends on firms’ objectives.     

企业所有者与经理人委托代理关系中最优激励报酬机制研究——兼论企业产业类型与业绩报酬的关系

为解决企业委托代理关系中经理人的道德风险和逆向选择问题,企业所有者必须设立一套最优激励报酬机制来激励和约束经理人的行为,使其从自身的利益出发采取对企业最有利的行动。最优激励报酬机制由固定收益、信息租金、风险收益、激励收益和经理人市场价格五部分组成。经理人的业绩激励收益与企业的产业类型相关。     

银行贷款、商业信用融资及我国上市公司的公司治理

本文讨论了银行贷款以及商业信用融资对我国上市公司公司治理的影响.通过对1995到2000年间上市公司CEO更换的研究,我们得到两个结论:第一,在经营业绩为负的公司中,银行贷款与强制性CEO更换存在负向关系,而商业信用融资与强制性CEO更换存在正向关系;第二,在盈利能力一般的公司中,商业信用融资与强制性CEO更换仍为正向关系,但银行贷款与强制性CEO更换却不存在明显的关系.以上结果表明,商业信用融资在CEO强制性更换中起到了积极的作用,改善了上市公司的公司治理,而银行贷款却没有起到相应的作用,甚至有负面的作用.     

Individual Performance as a Function of Group Contingencies and Group Size

The effects of small group incentive plans on the individual performance of a simple assembly task were studied in a simulated work environment. Subjects were 28 college students who worked under an individual monetaty incentive system, and then under a group incentive system in groups of two, four, five or nine. Following the group incentive condition, subjects again worked under the individual incentive system. Individual performance did not change significantly when subjects were exposed to the group incentive svstem nor did overall group productivitv differ as a function of group size. However, performance variability across individuals in the groups was dependent upon group size, with the greatest variability occurring in the groups of two, and the least variability occurring in the group of nine.     

基于效率视角的上市公司股权激励工具选择研究

本文运用2011-2016年发布股权激励计划的我国A股上市公司数据,从激励效率的角度,探讨公司规模、成长性及产权性质等异质性要素如何影响公司股权激励工具的选择。研究发现,公司规模能够显著影响股权激励工具的效率,大型上市公司更适合使用股票期权,而小型上市公司更适合使用限制性股票;且公司成长性越高,上述匹配关系对股权激励效率的影响越显著。对于国有上市公司,选择股票期权作为股权激励工具比限制性股票更具有激励效率。     

A MECHANISM DESIGN APPROACH TO CLIMATE‐CHANGE AGREEMENTS

We take a mechanism design perspective to investigate how environmental agreements should account for multilateral externalities, incentive compatibility, and voluntary participation by sovereign countries. The optimal mechanism involves a tradeoff between a free rider problem in the effort provision of participating countries and the necessity of inducing countries to ratify the agreement. This mechanism can be approximated by a simple menu with attractive implementation and robustness properties. Limits on enforcement and commitment might nevertheless hinder the performance of this menu, making the “business as usual” scenario more likely.     

代理人信息租金抽取的贝叶斯优化与配置效率均衡分析

研究逆向选择下,委托人通过信号辅助改善信息结构后所面临的代理人信息租金抽取与配置效率的均衡决策问题。首先,分析讨论了完全信息下的最优契约和逆向选择下先验分布基础上的次优契约;之后,基于贝叶斯规则,将与代理人相关的外部信号及信号搜集成本纳入委托人的最优规划问题,对后验分布下的均衡变动进行了分析,给出了信号搜集成本可行预算集。研究表明,贝叶斯方法有利于委托人在信息租金与效率扭曲冲突中优化决策,为复杂环境下的实务契约设计逼近激励相容契约提供了量化参考依据。     

On the Equivalence of Bayesian and Dominant Strategy Implementation

We consider a standard social choice environment with linear utilities and independent, one‐dimensional, private types. We prove that for any Bayesian incentive compatible mechanism there exists an equivalent dominant strategy incentive compatible mechanism that delivers the same interim expected utilities for all agents and the same ex ante expected social surplus. The short proof is based on an extension of an elegant result due to Gutmann, Kemperman, Reeds, and Shepp (1991). We also show that the equivalence between Bayesian and dominant strategy implementation generally breaks down when the main assumptions underlying the social choice model are relaxed or when the equivalence concept is strengthened to apply to interim expected allocations.     

三种角色压力对寿险代理人工作满意度的影响研究

本文以中国保险公司的寿险代理人作为研究对象,研究三种角色压力与员工工作满意度之间的关系.本文研究发现角色冲突、角色模糊性和工作家庭冲突对工作满意度的各个维度的影响效果是不同的,并且子女因素在三种角色压力与工作满意度各个维度关系中起调节作用.本文的研究发现不仅丰富了有关工作满意度研究领域的研究成果,而且对于保险公司改进员工工作满意度具有参考价值.     

Board size and firm value: evidence from Australia

We study the effect of board size on firm value in Australia. Using a large sample of Australian firms over the period 2001–2011, we find strong evidence of a negative relationship. We show that firms with a large board are associated with CEO compensation that is sensitive to firm size, but not to firm performance. This incentive to accumulate assets is congruent with the fact that firms with a large board also exhibit lower operating performance and higher operating costs. Furthermore, we find that the effect of board size is stronger in small firms. This result might explain why earlier studies, which focused on large Australian firms, found board size to have little impact on firm value.     

Information Acquisition and Voluntary Disclosure in an Export‐Processing System

We study a strategic information management problem in the export‐processing trade, where the buyer controls the raw material input and sales and the producer is responsible for production. The production is vulnerable to random yield risk. The producer can exert a costly effort to acquire the private yield rate information and discretionarily share it with the buyer. We develop a sequential Bayesian game model that captures three key features of the system—endogenous information endowment, voluntary disclosure, and ex post information sharing—a significant departure from the literature. The optimal disclosure strategy is driven by the trade‐off between the gains from Pareto efficiency improvement and self‐interested overproduction. It is specified by two thresholds on yield rate: only the middle‐yield producers (with yield rate between these two thresholds) share private information to improve supply‐demand match; the low‐ and high‐yield producers withhold information to extract excess input from the buyer. The buyer in response penalizes nondisclosure with reduced input and rewards information sharing with a larger order. This strategic interaction is further exacerbated by the double marginalization effect from decentralization, resulting in severe efficiency loss. We examine the effectiveness of three corrective mechanisms—vertical integration, mandatory disclosure, and production restriction—and reveal the costs of information suppressive effect and overinvestment incentive and the benefit from concessions on the processing fee. Our study endogenizes the asymmetric supply risk and provides the first attempt to rationalize the strategic interactions of informational and operational incentives in the export‐processing system.     

Efficient Design with Interdependent Valuations

We study efficient, Bayes‐Nash incentive compatible mechanisms in a social choice setting that allows for informational and allocative externalities. We show that such mechanisms exist only if a congruence condition relating private and social rates of information substitution is satisfied. If signals are multi‐dimensional, the congruence condition is determined by an integrability constraint, and it can hold only in nongeneric cases where values are private or a certain symmetry assumption holds. If signals are one‐dimensional, the congruence condition reduces to a monotonicity constraint and it can be generically satisfied. We apply the results to the study of multi‐object auctions, and we discuss why such auctions cannot be reduced to one‐dimensional models without loss of generality.     

The Dynamic Pivot Mechanism

We consider truthful implementation of the socially efficient allocation in an independent private‐value environment in which agents receive private information over time. We propose a suitable generalization of the pivot mechanism, based on the marginal contribution of each agent. In the dynamic pivot mechanism, the ex post incentive and ex post participation constraints are satisfied for all agents after all histories. In an environment with diverse preferences it is the unique mechanism satisfying ex post incentive, ex post participation, and efficient exit conditions. We develop the dynamic pivot mechanism in detail for a repeated auction of a single object in which each bidder learns over time her true valuation of the object. The dynamic pivot mechanism here is equivalent to a modified second price auction.