Minimum Wages as a Barrier to Entry: Evidence from Germany

This study analyses employers' support for the introduction of industry‐specific minimum wages as a cost‐raising strategy in order to deter market entry. Using a unique data set consisting of 800 firms in the German service sector, we show that high‐productivity employers support minimum wages. We further find some evidence that minimum wage support is higher in industries and regions with low barriers to entry. This is particularly the case in East Germany, where the perceived threat of low‐wage competition from Central and Eastern European countries is relatively high. In addition, firms paying collectively agreed wages are more strongly in favour of minimum wages.     

The value of a firm’s engagement in ESG practices: Are we looking at the right side?

Firms allocate many resources to environmental, social, and governance (ESG) issues and to growth options as if they were independent sources of value. Challenging this view, this paper explores the interplay of a firm's engagement in ESG practices and growth options in determining its total value. We draw upon real options reasoning to explain how ESG practices can carry two opposite (trust-enhancing and risk-reducing) forces, driving an inverted U-form relationship between ESG performance and growth options value. Moreover, we argue that ESG performance and growth options are likely to build substitutive insurance mechanisms which might exert a negative moderating effect of growth options on the relationship between ESG performance and a firm's total value. Empirical analyses of ESG scores and growth options values on a panel of U.S. firms from 2009 to 2018 provide substantial support for our hypotheses. Our results show that the inverted U-form relationship between ESG performance and growth options value becomes stronger for the environmental and social pillars. Our evidence on the moderating effect of growth option values also provides valuable insights for interpreting prior conflicting empirical evidence on the association between ESG performance and a firm's total value.     

哈特对美国现实主义法学的批判及其问题

哈特对现实主义法学的批判主要包括两个方面：一是以语言的开放结构为工具,通过质疑“逻辑贬抑论”、“规则怀疑论”对现实主义法学的“法律不确定性”命题进行挞伐;二是以内在观点与外在观点、内在陈述与外在陈述的二分工具对现实主义法学的“预测模式”进行诘难。哈特对现实主义法学“法律不确定性”命题的批判并没有说出比现实主义者更新的内容,并且未曾或故意忽略了该命题提出的历史背景、理论旨趣和适用范围。对“预测模式”的批判主要是基于一种不同理论立场的“误读”,即要求一种司法面向的法理学去承担本体论上的任务。     

历史的碎片与拼图式叙事空间——《比利·巴思格特》的后现代叙事策略分析

E.L.多克托罗的经典之作《比利·巴思格特》推翻了传统的线性叙述模式,构建了全新的时间和空间秩序。小说以第一人称个体叙事勾勒出美国大萧条时期的社会景象,多克托罗重访历史,以史喻今,对＂里根时代＂的社会丑恶和意识形态进行了深刻地抨击。把虚构人物和历史人物拼贴起来,多克托罗引领读者经历了别样的历史,而小说自身也成了一种彰显历史意义的文本。     

母语思维对中国大学生英语写作的影响

本文探讨了母语思维对中国大学生的英语写作水平的影响,采用了有声思维法、写作测试和访谈等方法,分别从解题、内容构思、结构构思、文本输出和过程管理五个方面探讨了母语思维对英语写作存在的影响,最后就英语写作的不同过程中充分发挥母语思维的积极作用,避免其消极作用提出了个人建议.     

VERTICAL RELATIONS UNDER CREDIT CONSTRAINTS

We model the impact that credit constraints and market risk have on the vertical relationships between firms in the supply chain. Firms which might face credit constraints in future investments become endogenously risk averse when accumulating pledgable assets. In the short run, the optimal supply contract involves risk sharing, so inducing double marginalization. Credit constraints thus result in higher retail prices, and this is true whether the firm is debt or equity funded. Further, we offer a new theory of supplier finance arms as we show an intrinsic complementarity between supply and lending which reduces financing inefficiencies created by informational asymmetries. The model offers: a theory of countervailing power based on credit constraints; a transmission mechanism linking the cost of borrowing with retail prices; and a motive for outsourcing supply (or distribution) in the face of market risk.     

玉米根系的生长及其在土壤中的分布

利用池栽网架法和根系双向切片法研究了玉米根系的生长动态及其在土层中的分布。结果表明,初生根和第1～4层次生根与地面呈小于45°的夹角伸长。随着根层数的提高,次生根与地面的夹角逐渐增大。根系干重的85%～90%分布于距植株20cm、深40cm 的柱状土壤内。鲁三9号根系的水平分布较鲁原单4号分布集中。     

Protectionism: An analysis from project LINK

The LINK system of world trade is used to examine present tendencies toward protectionism. In protectionist scenarios we increase the prices of manufactured imports into 13 LINK-OECD countries by 5, 10, and 20 percent respectively, for 1978–1979. If a country's import equations do not depend significantly on relative price, we impose corresponding quantitative import restrictions of 5, 10, and 20 percent. Smaller OECD countries, developing countries, and socialist countries are assumed to be nonprotectionist in these scenarios. The discrepancies between the values of leading variables in the protectionist scenarios and in a baseline case show the effects of the different degrees of protectionism assumed. The results describe and validate Adam Smith's principles of the gains from free trade.     

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.     

CONTROL RIGHTS IN COMPLEX PARTNERSHIPS

This paper develops a theory of the allocation of authority between two players who are in a complex partnership, that is, a partnership which produces impure public goods. We show that the optimal allocation depends on technological factors, the parties’ valuations of the goods produced, and the degree of impurity of these goods. When the degree of impurity is large, control rights should be given to the main investor, irrespective of preference considerations. There are some situations in which this allocation is optimal even if the degree of impurity is very low as long as one party’s investment is more important than the other party’s. If the parties’ investments are of similar importance and the degree of impurity is large, shared authority is optimal with a greater share going to the low‐valuation party. If the importance of the parties’ investments is similar but the degree of impurity is neither large nor small, the low‐valuation party should receive sole authority. We analyze an extension in which side payments are infeasible. We check for robustness of our results in several dimensions, such as allowing for multiple parties or for joint authority, and apply our results to interpret a number of complex partnerships, including those involving schools and child custody.