Firing Costs,Efficiency Wages and Unemployment

This paper uses a Shapiro–Stiglitz efficiency wage model to analyse the effects of firing costs on wages, employment, expected utility and profits. It considers that the probability of a non–shirker being fired depends on an exogenous shock which follows a two–state Markov process. It finds that higher severance payments give rise to lower wages, a lower unemployment rate, an increase in firms’ profits and a decrease in the utility of both workers and the unemployed. These conclusions derive from the finding that a greater probability of keeping one’s job, because of higher firing costs, raises the value of the job and reduces the worker’s incentives to behave opportunistically; this enables firms to reduce wages. Hence, if firms pay efficiency wages, a higher degree of labour market flexibility increases unemployment.     

Worker and Firm Heterogeneity in Wage Growth: An AKM Approach

This paper estimates a wage growth equation containing human capital variables known from the traditional Mincerian wage equation with year, worker and firm fixed effects included as well. The paper thus contributes further to the large empirical literature on unobserved heterogeneity following the work of Abowd, Kramarz, and Margolis [1999; Econometrica 67(2): 251–333]. Our main contribution is to extend the analysis from wage levels to wage growth. The specification enables us to estimate the individual‐specific and firm‐specific fixed effects and their degree of explanation on wage growth. The analysis is conducted using Danish longitudinal matched employer–employee data from 1980 to 2006. We find that the worker fixed effect dominates both the firm fixed effect and the effect of the observed covariates. Worker effects are estimated to explain 7–12 per cent of the variance in wage growth whereas firm effects are estimated to explain 4–10 per cent. We furthermore find a negative correlation between the worker and firm effects, as do nearly all authors examining wage level equations.     

Contract Length as Risk Management When Labor is not Homogeneous

This paper examines the choice of contract length for workers who possess unique skills. Uncertainty, facing both the worker and the firm, creates an incentive to reallocate risk. The uncertainty arises from two sources: variation in the market value of the worker's human capital and fluctuation in the worker's physical production. Long‐term contracts are typically modeled as compensating wage differentials, or as a solution to the problem of asymmetric information. This paper develops a model proposing more complex behavior in the reallocation of risk between the contracting parties. The model shows that long‐term labor contracts are most likely to be observed when price uncertainty in the labor market exceeds the worker's productive uncertainty.     

成本信息不对称下的应用服务外包菜单式合约

客户企业实施应用服务外包时,面临着成本信息不对称所带来的风险。针对该问题,以客户企业期望收入最大化为目标,在应用服务提供商(Application Service Provider, ASP)所拥有的成本效率参数及努力水平不可观测下研究客户企业如何通过服务外包菜单式合约的设计激励ASP付出最优的努力水平,并显示出真实的成本信息。研究表明,收益共享系数是成本效率参数、风险规避度、产出方差的减函数;客户企业向ASP支付的期望服务报酬除了补偿保留效用与服务生产成本还将额外支付风险成本、信息租金;风险成本随风险规避度、产出方差递增,随成本效率参数递减;信息租金随风险规避度、产出方差、成本效率参数递减。     

产需不确定下基于零售商风险规避的三级供应链组合契约模型

针对产需不确定下单一供应商、制造商和风险规避的零售商组成的三级供应链系统,建立了分散和集中情况下的最优决策模型。通过设计风险共担和GL组合契约实现了三级供应链的协调。讨论了风险规避零售商的最优订购决策,分析了风险规避对供应链期望效益的影响。比较了风险规避和风险中性两种情况下零售商的最优决策。探讨了组合契约的协调问题及契约参数之间的关系。研究表明供应链的期望利润随着产需不确定的增加而减少,风险规避下零售商的期望利润低于风险中性时的期望利润,零售商的期望利润随着风险规避程度的加大而减少,零售商最优订购量随风险规避程度的增加而变化。最后数值算例验证了模型和契约协调的有效性。     

考虑销售商风险规避的双边信息不对称的供应链协调

非对称信息和风险态度成为影响供应链协调的重要因素,而契约机制设计是实现协调的一种方法。本文在双边成本信息不对称情形下研究供应链契约机制的设计问题。考虑了由一个风险中性的供应商和一个风险规避的销售商组成的二级供应链,供应商和销售商分别拥有私人的生产成本信息和销售成本信息。在分散决策下,供销双方为获得更好的私人利得从而有隐藏信息的动机。为实现信息的真实揭示,文中引入了利他委托人这一概念,从而供应链成为协调主体。借助AGV机制思想,设计了具有激励性质的转移支付,并且基于均值-方差方法建立了非对称信息下的供应链模型。我们发现销售商风规避度在一定范围时,所设计的激励机制能够实现供销双方信息的真实揭示,但并不能完全保证双方的事后非负收益。为解决这一问题,给出一种以期望信息租金比为基础的事后收益分配规则,设计了补偿参数。结合转移支付和补偿参数,提出了一个契约机制。我们发现当销售商风规避度不超过上界k_r时,该机制能真实的揭示信息,并且能够保证供销双方的事后合理的收益分配。此外,当供销双方真实揭示信息时,风险规避度较大的销售商组成的供应链有更低商品交易量和供应链收益。最后,给出数值算例,验证信息揭示的激励有效性并对风险规避度进行敏感性分析。本文的研究将对双边不对称信息下的供应链管理提供一定的理论基础和实践指导。     

Noncontractible Heterogeneity in Directed Search

This paper provides a directed search model designed to explain the residual part of wage variation left over after the impact of education and other observable worker characteristics have been removed. Workers have private information about their characteristics at the time they apply for jobs. Firms value these characteristics differently and can observe them once workers apply. They hire the worker they most prefer. However, the characteristics are not contractible, so firms cannot condition their wages on them. This paper shows how to extend arguments from directed search to handle this, allowing for arbitrary distributions of worker and firm types. The model is used to provide a functional relationship that ties together the wage distribution and the wage–duration function. This relationship provides a testable implication of the model. This relationship suggests a common property of wage distributions that guarantees that workers who leave unemployment at the highest wages also have the shortest unemployment duration. This is in strict contrast to the usual (and somewhat implausible) directed search story in which high wages are always accompanied by higher probability of unemployment.     

The Value of a Statistical Life for Risk‐Averse and Risk‐Seeking Individuals

This article estimates the value of a statistical life (VSL) for Chile under the hedonic wage method while accounting for individual risk preferences. Two alternative measures of risk aversion are used. First, risk aversion is directly measured using survey measures of preferences over hypothetical gambles, and second, over observed individual behaviors that may proxy for risk preferences, such as smoking status, are used. I reconcile the results with a theoretical model of economic behavior that predicts how the wage‐risk tradeoff changes as risk aversion differs across individuals. The VSL estimates range between 0.61 and 8.68 million dollars. The results using smoking behavior as a proxy for risk attitudes are consistent with previous findings. However, directly measuring risk aversion corrects the wage‐risk tradeoff estimation bias in the opposite direction. The results are robust to other observed measures of risk aversion such as drinking behavior and stock investments. Results suggest that, consistent with the literature that connects smoking behavior with labor market outcomes, smoking status could be capturing poor health productivity effect in addition to purely risk preferences.     

模糊厌恶下关系型借贷定价和最优贷款利率

考虑决策者是模糊厌恶的,利用实物期权方法,解析地给出了银行价值,企业价值和最优停贷水平。分析了模糊厌恶和基准波动率对最优贷款利率,最优停贷水平,企业价值和银行价值的影响。数值分析表明：模糊厌恶提高了贷款利率,降低了企业和银行价值。在基准波动率水平较小时,模糊厌恶推迟了停贷水平;在基准波动率较大时,模糊厌恶加速了停贷水平。此外,在模糊中性下,企业价值是基准波动率凸函数,银行价值是基准波动率凹函数。而在模糊厌恶下,企业价值和银行价值都随着基准波动率的增加而递减。本文从行为金融角度为中小企业"融资贵"提供了新的解释。     

基于决策者风险规避特性的供应链需求信息共享价值分析

在随机需求条件下,利用条件风险估值(conditional value-at-risk,CVaR)的风险度量准则建立了供应链的需求信息共享决策模型,着重分析了零售商的风险规避程度以及市场需求的不确定性信息对供应链各决策者以及供应链整体信息共享价值的影响。研究结果表明,需求信息共享价值与零售商的风险规避程度、市场不确定性大小以及市场不确定信息所预测的市场需求变化情况有关。数值分析结果表明,零售商越害怕市场的不确定性风险,需求信息共享越有利于提升分散供应链的运作效率;但当市场信息反映出未来的市场需求是消极且零售商接近风险中性时,供应链的需求信息共享价值反而小于零,此时没有进行信息共享的必要。     

Equilibrium Wage Dispersion with Worker and Employer Heterogeneity

We construct and estimate an equilibrium search model with on–the–job–search. Firms make take–it–or–leave–it wage offers to workers conditional on their characteristics and they can respond to the outside job offers received by their employees. Unobserved worker productive heterogeneity is introduced in the form of cross–worker differences in a “competence” parameter. On the other side of the market, firms also are heterogeneous with respect to their marginal productivity of labor. The model delivers a theory of steady–state wage dispersion driven by heterogenous worker abilities and firm productivities, as well as by matching frictions. The structural model is estimated using matched employer and employee French panel data. The exogenous distributions of worker and firm heterogeneity components are nonparametrically estimated. We use this structural estimation to provide a decomposition of cross–employee wage variance. We find that the share of the cross–sectional wage variance that is explained by person effects varies across skill groups. Specifically, this share lies close to 40% for high–skilled white collars, and quickly decreases to 0% as the observed skill level decreases. The contribution of market imperfections to wage dispersion is typically around 50%.     

The Firm as a Means of Concealing Information

The aim of this paper is to demonstrate that a firm may owe its continued existence to its attempts to conceal information from its competitors about the unknown characteristics of a certain factor, not just to its savings on market transaction costs, its team‐working, risk‐sharing, or the encouragement of ex ante specific investment. This is because the existence of a firm contract severs the relationship between the factor market and the product market, thereby making it difficult for outsiders to observe the marginal contribution of the intermediate factor and make statistical inferences about the factor's unknown characteristics. Furthermore, an optimal contract is determined by a trade‐off not only between traditional risk‐sharing and incentive, but also between the incentive and information concealing. Finally, we show that this latter kind of trade‐off also affects the position of the optimal boundary of the firm.     

Reputation for Quality

We propose a model of firm reputation in which a firm can invest or disinvest in product quality and the firm's reputation is defined as the market's belief about this quality. We analyze the relationship between a firm's reputation and its investment incentives, and derive implications for reputational dynamics. Reputational incentives depend on the specification of market learning. When consumers learn about quality through perfect good news signals, incentives decrease in reputation and there is a unique work–shirk equilibrium with ergodic dynamics. When learning is through perfect bad news signals, incentives increase in reputation and there is a continuum of shirk–work equilibria with path‐dependent dynamics. For a class of imperfect Poisson learning processes and low investment costs, we show that there exists a work–shirk equilibrium with ergodic dynamics. For a subclass of these learning processes, any equilibrium must feature working at all low and intermediate levels of reputation and shirking at the top.     

基于非排它性互换合约的管理层激励研究

管理者进行金融衍生品市场的非排它性股权互换交易会降低报酬合约的事后激励强度,并对企业价值和风险产生影响.本文在管理者可同时影响企业风险和企业价值的条件下,构建基于股权互换避险交易的管理者激励薪酬动态博弈模型.结果表明,当管理者投入产出效率高于某临界值时,互换避险的存在不会降低激励合约的强度;否则激励合约强度的减弱程度随...     

Wage Setting in Sweden: An Empirical Test of a Barebones Union Model

ABSTRACT In this paper a simple monopoly union model for the Swedish economy is presented and estimated. Interest is focused on the union's objectives. The results indicate that two popular representations of union objectives — wage bill and rent maximisation — are rejected by the data. Instead, preferences are highly concave in the wage rate, with an estimated degree of relative risk aversion well above unity evaluated at sample means.     

Equilibrium Wage‐Tenure Contracts

In this study we consider a labor market matching model where firms post wage‐tenure contracts and workers, both employed and unemployed, search for new job opportunities. Given workers are risk averse, we establish there is a unique equilibrium in the environment considered. Although firms in the market make different offers in equilibrium, all post a wage‐tenure contract that implies a worker's wage increases smoothly with tenure at the firm. As firms make different offers, there is job turnover, as employed workers move jobs as the opportunity arises. This implies the increase in a worker's wage can be due to job‐to‐job movements as well as wage‐tenure effects. Further, there is a nondegenerate equilibrium distribution of initial wage offers that is differentiable on its support except for a mass point at the lowest initial wage. We also show that relevant characteristics of the equilibrium can be written as explicit functions of preferences and the other market parameters.     

Job Matching and the Wage Distribution

This paper brings together the microeconomic‐labor and the macroeconomic‐equilibrium views of matching in labor markets. We nest a job matching model à la Jovanovic (1984) into a Mortensen and Pissarides (1994)‐type equilibrium search environment. The resulting framework preserves the implications of job matching theory for worker turnover and wage dynamics, and it also allows for aggregation and general equilibrium analysis. We obtain two new equilibrium implications of job matching and search frictions for wage inequality. First, learning about match quality and worker turnover map Gaussian output noise into an ergodic wage distribution of empirically accurate shape: unimodal, skewed, with a Paretian right tail. Second, high idiosyncratic productivity risk hinders learning and sorting, and reduces wage inequality. The equilibrium solutions for the wage distribution and for the aggregate worker flows—quits to unemployment and to other jobs, displacements, hires—provide the likelihood function of the model in closed form.     

不利天气影响下“公司+农户”型订单契约设计

不利天气影响农业生产并使订单农业中各成员在履约过程中遭遇不可控风险,针对这一问题,构建了由风险厌恶的农户与风险中性的公司组成的两级农产品供应链随机利润模型,在条件风险价值(CVaR)准则下,建立了具有风险厌恶特性农户的CVaR决策模型,比较分析了不利天气对集中式与分散式决策模式下最优决策的影响。研究发现不利天气降低了供应链绩效而农户的风险厌恶特性则加剧了双边际效应,对此,设计了一种与天气指数和农户风险厌恶度相关的改进收益共享契约。研究表明:公司可依据不利天气影响的结果来设计订单契约以激励双方成为"收益共享、风险共担"的统一体,此外,在实施该订单契约后可实现农产品供应链的完美共赢协调,这弥补了分散式决策下的效率损失并增强了供应链系统的稳健性。     

系统风险的会计决定:企业财务风险、经营风险、系统风险的时变关联

新企业会计准则的颁布有力推进了我国金融工具信息披露制度建设,但是到目前为止,研究者对会计信息和上市公司系统风险的关系还不是很清楚.本文提出了新的经济理论模型用于研究财务风险、经营风险和系统风险的动态关联.主要结论:一、财务杠杆和经营杠杆以乘子的形式放大了无杠杆条件下的企业系统风险,这一结论在时变的条件下仍成立;二、理论证实了无杠杆条件下的企业系统风险来源于公司净利润-流通市值比率、销售增长率和平均价格增长率的变动;三、财务风险和经营风险间存在一个权衡,例如经营风险高的公司,将会选择一个较低的财务风险,使得公司有一个相对合理的系统风险.因此,会计风险披露制度的推进可以为投资者提供更多和更好的有关公司风险的信息.     

Risk Aversion,Collective Bargaining,and Wages in Germany

We develop an open‐shop model of trade union membership in which workers differ in their risk attitudes, and derive conditions under which the bargained wage will fall and union membership will increase with a general rise in risk aversion. Using data from the German Socio‐Economic Panel we define broad bargaining units and show that wages decline as average risk aversion of union members in these units rises, controlling for individual effects of risk aversion. Given a negative relationship between wages and employment, this suggests that secular changes in risk attitudes, because of an aging workforce or greater female labour force participation, can help to explain variations in the employment performance of unionized economies.