专利技术授权、生产外包与合同设计

专利授权及其授权协议是知识产权转化为现实生产力的关键。本文针对由一个专利技术提供商、一个品牌制造商和一个OEM组成的供应链,考虑市场需求信息不对称以及OEM存在规模经济效应,研究了专利技术提供商最优专利授权合同设计问题,考察了不对称信息、规模经济效应等因素对专利授权合同设计、供应链利润、消费者剩余和社会福利的影响。研究结果表明：在不对称信息下,专利技术提供商通过设计一组合同菜单可以有效甄别市场需求信息;OEM会有动机去提升其规模经济效应,但却不一定有利于其他供应链成员和消费者;不对称信息的存在会影响供应链成员企业的利润水平以及消费者剩余,并总是会导致供应链系统利润的损失,但若满足一定条件,则专利技术提供商与品牌制造商可以达成信息共享谈判,实现"双赢"。     

独立定价还是共同定价:新支付工具的定价策略

基于新支付工具发展初期市场特征构建双边市场定价模型,分析共同定价和独立定价策略下企业利润和社会福利最大化新支付工具定价。研究显示：政府较企业对新支付工具制定更低价格水平促使用户支付选择转移,特别是在共同定价策略下会有效提升市场效率,达到社会福利最大;但若政府无法做到共同定价,特别在新支付工具成本优势不明显时,会使支付工具间存在过度补贴而降低社会福利,这时企业利润最大化定价为次优选择。     

The Implications of Utilizing Market Information and Adopting Agricultural Advice for Farmers in Developing Economies

To alleviate poverty in developing countries, governments and non‐governmental organizations disseminate two types of information: (i) agricultural advice to enable farmers to improve their operations (cost reduction, quality improvement, and process yield increase); and (ii) market information about future price/demand to enable farmers to make better production planning decisions. This information is usually disseminated free of charge. While farmers can use the market information to improve their production plans without incurring any (significant) cost, adopting agricultural advice to improve operations requires upfront investment, for example, equipment, fertilizers, pesticides, and higher quality seeds. In this study, we examine whether farmers should use market information to improve their production plans (or adopt agricultural advice to improve their operations) when they engage in Cournot competition under both uncertain market demand and uncertain process yield. Our analysis indicates that both farmers will use the market information to improve their profits in equilibrium. Hence, relative to the base case in which market information is not available, the provision of market information can improve the farmers' total welfare (i.e., total profit for both farmers). Moreover, when the underlying process yield is highly uncertain or when the products are highly heterogeneous, the provision of market information is welfare‐maximizing in the sense that the maximum total welfare of farmers is attained when both farmers utilize market information in equilibrium. Furthermore, in equilibrium, whether a farmer adopts the agricultural advice depends on the size of the requisite upfront investment. More importantly, we show that agricultural advice is not always welfare improving unless the upfront investment is sufficiently low. This result implies that to improve farmers' welfare, governments should consider offering farmer subsidies.     

CSR投入下产品质量决策与专利授权合同设计

良好的专利授权有助于激发企业持续创新的动力,实现专利技术的商业化和产业化,而产品质量则是决定企业能否取得市场竞争优势的关键。本文针对由专利持有企业和品牌企业组成的系统,考虑市场需求信息不对称以及品牌企业承担社会责任（Corporate social responsibility, CSR）,研究品牌企业产品质量决策和专利授权合同设计问题,进而分析CSR投入对各个企业利润、消费者剩余以及社会福利的影响。研究结果表明：不同市场条件下,专利持有企业会策略性地设计专利授权合同形式,即选择仅包含"一次性固定授权费"或者"一次性固定授权费+版税提成"的专利授权合同;品牌企业CSR投入并不会影响专利授权合同的形式,但会提高一次性固定授权费;CSR投入会促使品牌企业提高产品质量,但并不一定会导致产品销售价格的提高;CSR投入虽然会降低品牌企业利润,但能有效提升专利持有企业利润、消费者剩余和社会福利。     

Supply Chain Design and Carbon Penalty: Monopoly vs. Monopolistic Competition

This paper studies whether imposing carbon costs changes the supply chain structure and social welfare. We explore the problem from a central policymaker's perspective who wants to maximize social welfare. We consider two stakeholders, retailers, and consumers, who optimize their own objectives (i.e., profits and net utility) and three competitive settings (i.e., monopoly, monopolistic competition with symmetric market share, and monopolistic competition with asymmetric market share). For the monopoly case, we find that when the retailer's profit is high, imposing some carbon emission charges on the retailer and the consumers does not substantially change the supply chain structure or the social welfare. However, when the retailer's profit is low, imposing carbon costs optimally can lead to a significant increase in social welfare. Moreover, the impact of imposing carbon emission charges becomes more significant when the degree of competition increases. Additionally, the quantum of benefit may depend only on factors common across industries, such as fuel and carbon costs.     

论中国轿车行业最佳贸易和产业政策

本文通过校正模型的方法,利用不变替代弹性效用函数从社会福利最大化的角度,对中国轿车行业最佳贸易和产业政策进行经验分析.本文研究结果表明,中国轿车行业竞争比Bertrand竞争激烈,并且,外国厂商之间竞争又比本国厂商竞争激烈,但是政府仍然可以通过适当的贸易和产业政策提高本国的整体福利,同时本文研究表明,中国政府实际关税水平比理论模拟值高很多,说明中国对轿车产业保护程度过高.因此,政府可以通过进一步地降低关税提高本国的整体福利水平.     

基于Swarm的不同合约发电市场中多主体博弈仿真

为了研究合约电量比率对政府税收、社会福利、市场规模及构成的影响,本文提出一种基于Swarm的不同合约发电市场中多主体博弈模型.通过该仿真模型可以得出结论:税收作为一种政府调节手段,随着合约电量比率的减少将变得更有效;当生产能力确定,合约电量比率增加到一定值,政府将不能通过调整税率使实际社会福利最大化;对于不同的合约电量比率,社会福利最大化下的电力市场规模及结构不同.     

Socially and privately optimal shareholder activism

This paper aims to evaluate the private and social gains of shareholder activism in an optimal contracting framework involving dispersed shareholders who may become active. The social gains are based on the welfare to stake holders in the firm, whereas the private gains are based on shareholder wealth only. Active shareholders influence the contracting game with the CEO, and therefore also the size and the distribution of the surplus to be split between the shareholders and the CEO. Although the model is very simple and focussing on the creation and distribution of welfare between the shareholders and the CEO, we nonetheless identify surprising divergence between the private and social profitability of shareholder activism. Shareholder activism that is privately profitable is not necessarily socially profitable. The distributional effects of shareholder activism may dominate the efficiency effects to make shareholder activism a negative social NPV project.      

Opt‐Out Options in New Product Co‐development Partnerships

We study three contractual arrangements—co‐development, licensing, and co‐development with opt‐out options—for the joint development of new products between a small and financially constrained innovator firm and a large technology company, as in the case of a biotech innovator and a major pharma company. We formulate our arguments in the context of a two‐stage model, characterized by technical risk and stochastically changing cost and revenue projections. The model captures the main disadvantages of traditional co‐development and licensing arrangements: in co‐development the small firm runs a risk of running out of capital as future costs rise, while licensing for milestone and royalty (M&R) payments, which eliminates the latter risk, introduces inefficiency, as profitable projects might be abandoned. Counter to intuition we show that the biotech's payoff in a licensing contract is not monotonically increasing in the M&R terms. We also show that an option clause in a co‐development contract that gives the small firm the right but not the obligation to opt out of co‐development and into a pre‐agreed licensing arrangement avoids the problems associated with fully committed co‐development or licensing: the probability that the small firm will run out of capital is greatly reduced or completely eliminated and profitable projects are never abandoned.     

制造商RFID策略与零售商窜货策略的动态博弈分析

考虑由单一制造商、单一零售商及两个独立市场(高端市场和低端市场)组成的供应链系统，针对零售商可能窜货的问题，建立了制造商RFID采纳和零售商窜货的动态博弈模型，分析了零售商窜货策略和制造商RFID采纳策略，研究了RFID双重效应(成本效应和惩罚效应)对灰色市场、企业收益及社会福利的影响。研究表明：1)RFID可以有效抑制零售商的窜货行为。当不存在RFID时，若市场差异较大，零售商窜货，若市场差异较小，零售商不窜货。而当存在RFID时，即使市场差异足够大，若RFID惩罚效应较强，零售商不窜货；2)RFID可能使得零售商窜货反而会增加制造商的收益。当不存在RFID时，零售商窜货总是降低制造商的收益。而当存在RFID时，若市场差异较小且RFID成本效应较强，零售商窜货增加了制造商的收益；3)制造商并非总是采纳RFID，其策略取决于市场差异的大小和RFID双重效应的强弱。     

Conservative accounting as a signaling device in debt covenants

This paper provides a signaling explanation for benefits of conservative accounting in a debt contracting setting. It develops a model in which firms want to finance more or less risky projects through debt, which is private information. Creditors price the risk on average riskiness, which implies a relatively high interest rate for low-risk firms. These firms can signal their low-risk type by implementing a conservative accounting system. The accounting signal is used in a debt covenant that stipulates early repayment in case of a bad signal. Thus, the low-risk firms benefit from a lower interest cost, but at the cost of higher risk of being forced to liquidate a profitable project. The analysis establishes conditions for separating and pooling equilibria and determines their individual and social welfare implications. It shows that conservative accounting by low-risk firms can even increase social welfare if it mitigates underinvestment.     

The Impact of Limited Supply on a Firm's Bundling Strategy

A firm's two‐product bundling decision is examined when the supply of one product is limited and consumer valuations are normally distSteckeributed. The firm can choose to sell products separately and/or through a bundle. We find that the impact of limited supply on a firm's bundling decision depends on the correlation between the consumer valuations of the two products as well as the symmetry level of the two products in terms of their attractiveness (how much they are valued by consumers). When the valuation correlation is high and the symmetry level of the two products is low, limited supply can drive bundling. When the valuation correlation is low or the symmetry level is high, limited supply can drive no bundling. When the attractiveness of both products are low or the valuation correlation is very high, limited supply has no impact on a firm's bundling decision: The firm should not bundle for all supply levels. This study offers a new driver for product bundling: the limited supply of a product. The existing bundling literature suggests that a firm should bundle symmetric products that have a low consumer valuation correlation, when bundling is driven by consumer valuation heterogeneity reduction. In contrast, when bundling is driven by limited supply, a firm should bundle asymmetric products with a high consumer valuation correlation. The benefit of supply‐driven bundling depends on the severity of supply limitation. When supply limitation is moderate, bundling creates value by expanding the market of the less attractive product. When supply limitation is severe, bundling enables a firm to extract a higher margin from the less attractive product.     

Competitive Bundling

This paper proposes a framework for studying competitive (pure) bundling in an oligopoly market. We find that under fairly general conditions, relative to separate sales, bundling raises market prices, benefits firms, and harms consumers when the number of firms is above a threshold (which can be small). This is in contrast to the findings in the duopoly case on which the existing literature often focuses. Our analysis also sheds new light on how consumer valuation dispersion affects price competition more generally.     

Why Competition from a Multi‐Channel E‐Tailer Does Not Always Benefit Consumers*

Empirical studies have delivered mixed conclusions on whether the widely acclaimed assertions of lower electronic retail (e‐tail) prices are true and to what extent these prices impact conventional retail prices, profits, and consumer welfare. For goods that require little in‐person pre‐ or postsales support such as CDs, DVDs, and books, we extend Balasubramanian's e‐tailer‐in‐the‐center, spatial, circular market model to examine the impact of a multichannel e‐tailer's presence on retailers' decisions to relocate, on retail prices and profits, and consumer welfare. We demonstrate several counter‐intuitive results. For example, when the disutility of buying online and shipping costs are relatively low, retailers are better off by not relocating in response to an e‐tailer's entry into the retail channel. In addition, such an entry—a multichannel strategy—may lead to increased retail prices and increased profits across the industry. Finally, consumers can be better off with less channel competition. The underlying message is that inferences regarding prices, profits, and consumer welfare critically depend on specifications of the good, disutility and shipping costs versus transportation costs (or more generally, positioning), and competition.     

技术赋能、用户规模与共享经济社会福利

以Airbnb和Uber为代表的共享经济业态已成为学术界关注热点,但当前研究侧重于商业模式,而忽视了凸显其"普惠"本质的社会福利分析。基于共享经济市场结构演进的三个典型阶段,本文构建理论模型刻画了技术赋能、用户规模与社会福利之间的内在关系。研究发现:在起步阶段,市场处于局部垄断状态,此时共享经济社会福利存在损失,且福利水平主要取决于技术赋能;在发展阶段,各个共享经济平台的市场范围产生重叠,平台企业间扩张用户规模的竞争将提升社会福利;在成熟阶段,平台间并购而形成"竞争性垄断"市场结构,此时社会福利可能再次得到提升。进一步的模型分析揭示了其内在机理:技术赋能对社会福利具有"替代"和"挖掘"的双重效应,而用户规模则对社会福利产生了"正负"两方面的外部性影响。本文为共享经济的平台战略和政府规制提供了有益指导。     

Does a combined strategy outperform independent policies? Impact of incentive policies on renewable power generation

Incentives for renewable energy based on feed-in-tariffs (FITs) and the renewable portfolio standard (RPS) have succeeded in reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from the power generation sector. Although numerous countries have adopted a strategy combining both approaches, few studies compare its performance with either the individual FITs or RPS approach. To evaluate the effects of these three policy instruments, this study takes market transactions into account, such as net transfers to the renewable and non-renewable sectors, RPS allocation, and renewable certificate/credit (RECs) exchange. It proposes central planning, bi-level regulation, and regulation under screening as the three market structure scenarios to construct its cases and includes social welfare in the incentive performance index. Further, this study extends to cases of asymmetric information by means of optimal control to reflect market reality for comparison. The numerical examples and counterfactual analyses reach the following conclusions. First, a combined incentive policy performs best when renewable power is in its early stage of development. Second, an integrated incentive policy may neutralize the drastic volatility of FITs or the RPS. Third, the RPS is a favorable approach when the levelized cost of renewable energy is lower than that of non-renewable, while FITs do well when the costs of renewable and non-renewable energy differ slightly. The key policy implication is that along with the reduction in renewable energy generation costs, an RPS and RECs exchange mechanism or combined strategy might be adopted for social welfare benefits, the benefit of the power plants or the TSOs, respectively.     

逆向供应链中电子废弃产品回收定价和补贴策略研究

随着废弃电子产品的大量涌现和社会环保意识的增强,废弃电子产品的回收处理成为社会关注的热点问题之一。在现有的文献研究中,更多的是从逆向供应链系统化的视角关注价格或税收政策对回收商或处理商的运营效率、积极性的影响,逆向供应链激励的关键问题即如何确定回收价格和补贴方面的研究却较少见。本文基于社会福利最大化的视角,建立斯塔克伯格博弈模型（社会福利模型）来确定逆向供应链分散管理中的回收价格和社会最优补贴费,该模型可以检验分散管理系统（环保局作为领导者、MIS和回收商作为追随者）中回收逆向供应链的回收价格和补贴的激励效应。通过社会福利模型和资金平衡模型的比较,以及比较案例的数值演算,结果发现：达到市场最优销售数量和向顾客提供回收废弃电子产品的最优奖金的状况下,销售商和回收商处于平衡状态;社会福利模型中窒息价格、零奖金对应的基准收集数量、相对于奖金的收集量敏感度等因素对社会福利的影响均优于资金平衡模型。     

Broadband Network Management and the Net Neutrality Debate

The debate of net neutrality and the potential regulation of net neutrality may fundamentally change the dynamics of data consumption and transmission through the Internet. The existing literature on economics of net neutrality focuses only on the supply side of the market, that is, a broadband service provider (BSP) may charge content providers for priority delivery of their content to consumers. In this article, we explore a complete spectrum of broadband network management options based on both the supply and demand sides of the market. We find that although the BSP always prefers the non‐neutral network management options, it does not always discriminate both sides of the market. From the social planner's perspective, we find that some network management options maximize the social welfare under certain market conditions while other options reduce the social welfare. Using the terminology from a recent Federal Communications Commission report and order, we categorize the social welfare maximizing options as “reasonable network management” and the social welfare reducing options as “unreasonable discrimination.” We also identify conditions under which the BSP's network management choices deviate from the social optimum. These conditions help establish the criteria under which the social planner might wish to regulate the BSP's actions.     

光滑暧昧模型下的不透明交易和管制措施研究

本文假定透明交易者对额外投资机会回报率的标准差(方差,投资风险)存在暧昧,这种认知暧昧性抑制了透明交易者的投资行为,会导致风险资产溢价过高及社会福利损失.透明交易者是暧昧厌恶的投资者,其投资决策依据光滑暧昧厌恶模型,需求函数呈现连续且光滑的特征.而不透明交易者,通过支付一定的信息获取成本获得私有信息而具有信息优势,他们是标准的风险厌恶的投资者.通过构建理性预期均衡,本文的研究发现:初始资产严格为正的透明交易者将获得严格为正的超额收益;提高信息获取成本将减少不透明交易者的比例,从而增加风险资产溢价,降低福利水平,因而不是一项好的管制措施;而旨在提高市场透明度降低交易者暧昧性的举措总有利于提高福利水平.     

从市场势力到有效市场势力--以中国化学药品制剂制造业为例

企业层面市场势力及其福利损失的准确估计是产业组织领域的基础性研究问题,厘清市场份额、市场势力及福利损失的相互关系有助于为反垄断政策的制定提供参考并帮助企业决策。本文定义"有效市场势力"为企业销售额所占市场份额和Lerner指数的乘积,并证实在给定的垄断竞争行业中有效市场势力与福利损失存在近似线性关系,因此从福利分析的角度,有效市场势力比市场势力更需要被重视。通过理论分析,本文给出了企业层面市场势力和福利损失的估计方法,修正了以产出价值量代替实物量进行生产函数估计时存在的偏误。通过实证分析,本文将相关方法应用于中国化学药品制剂制造业研究,发现1999~2015年中国上市化药企业平均市场势力为0.149,未表现出太强的垄断性;样本期间每家上市化药企业每年平均福利损失为0.76亿元,约占营业收入的7%;政府规制对化药企业市场势力和有效市场势力具有一定的影响,但近年来该影响趋于稳定,因此放弃直接的药品价格规制转而依靠药品价格谈判机制和反垄断规制不会对化学药品制剂市场产生剧烈影响。