Rent Seeking and Government Ownership of Firms: An Application to China’s Township-Village Enterprises.

Using its control of regulated inputs, a government agency extracts rents from a manager who undertakes an investment. Such government rent-seeking activity leads to a typical hold-up problem. Government ownership serves as a second-best commitment mechanism, through which the government agency will restrain itself from the rent-seeking activity and may even offer the manager assistance in the form of tax breaks and subsidies. This mechanism works at a cost, however, as government ownership also compromises ex post managerial incentives and creates distortion in resource allocation. Nevertheless, government ownership Pareto dominates private ownership under certain conditions. These conditions correspond to a host of stylized empirical observations concerning local government-owned firms, i.e., township-village enterprises, during China’s transition to a market economy.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/39882/3/wp497.pd

Decentralized Financing, Centralized Financing and the Dual Track System: Toward a New Theory of Soft Budget Constraints

I put forward a new theoretical framework to analyze the relationship between soft budget constraint syndrome and the economic performances of firms. It differs from the existing theoretical framework, à la Dewatripont and Maskin (1995), in the soft budget constraint literature. In this paper, soft budget constraint syndrome arises when firms that are expected to lose money are financed. The paper highlights a trade-off between hard and soft budget constraints. While soft budget constraints may compromise firms' incentives to improve performances, an all-out effort to harden budget constraints may put macro stability at risk, especially for economies suffering from allocative inefficiency. Based on this trade-off, the paper shows that a transition from centralized financing to decentralized financing in fact compromises firms' incentives to improve their performances, whereas a transition from centralized financing to a dual track system enhances efficiency. In the dual track system, budget constraints are soft in the centralized track but the macro stability of the economy is assured as a result. The macro stability enhances the disciplinary effect of hard budget constraints in the decentralized track, which in turn promotes firms' incentives to improve performances. The paper sheds light on a complementary relation between soft budget constraint syndrome in the state sector (i.e., the centralized track) and the remarkable growth of the non-state sector (i.e., the decentralized track) in China.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/39646/3/wp261.pd

From the Grabbing Hand to the Helping Hand

I present a study of ownership of firms under government rent seeking. Using its control of regulated inputs, a government agency extracts rents from a manager who undertakes an investment. Such a government rent seeking activity leads to a typical hold-up problem. Government ownership is shown to serve as a second best commitment mechanism through which the government agency will restrain itself from the rent seeking activity and even offer the manager support and favor such as tax breaks and subsidies. This mechanism works at a cost as government ownership compromises ex post managerial incentives and creates distortion in resource allocation. Nevertheless, under some fairly general conditions, government ownership Pareto dominates private ownership. The analysis corresponds to a host of stylized empirical observations concerning local government-owned firms during China's transition to a market economy. Based on this analysis, I suggest that local government owned firms will be transformed to private ownership as China's input markets become more liberalized.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/39448/3/wp58.pd

The Life Cycle of Government Ownership

Government ownership may dominate private ownership under government failure. Such dom- inance disappears as product markets grow mature, giving rise to the need for privatization. Buyers' limited wealth imposes a constraint on how and when privatization takes place. In particular, ¯rms may be underpriced during privatization, and privatization may take place at a sub-optimal timing which results in ¯rm performances to deteriorate in the short run, and to improve only in the long run. Partial privatization may alleviate the constraint in some cases but exacerbates the e±ciency loss in others. When the government is lesser an interventionist or when the product market grows mature very rapidly, privatization is likely to take place at a sub-optimal timing. The analysis is applied to the dynamics of the Chinese non-state sector.government rent seeking, government ownership, privatization

From the Grabbing Hand to the Helping Hand: A Rent Seeking Model of China's Township-Village Enterprises

Ownership of firms, Government, Rent seeking, Township and village enterprises, China

From the Grabbing Hand to the Helping Hand

I present a study of ownership of firms under government rent seeking. Using its control of regulated inputs, a government agency extracts rents from a manager who undertakes an investment. Such a government rent seeking activity leads to a typical hold-up problem. Government ownership is shown to serve as a second best commitment mechanism through which the government agency will restrain itself from the rent seeking activity and even offer the manager support and favor such as tax breaks and subsidies. This mechanism works at a cost as government ownership compromises ex post managerial incentives and creates distortion in resource allocation. Nevertheless, under some fairly general conditions, government ownership Pareto dominates private ownership. The analysis corresponds to a host of stylized empirical observations concerning local government-owned firms during China's transition to a market economy. Based on this analysis, I suggest that local government owned firms will be transformed to private ownership as China's input markets become more liberalized.corruption, bribery, government ownership, China's non-state sector

Dual Track Liberalization: With and Without Losers

Dual track liberalization, relying upon the continued enforcement of existing contracts and the simultaneous creation of a free market sector, represents a powerful mechanism in economic reform. If not anticipated, the reform implements an outcome that is both Pareto improving and e±ciency enhancing as compared to the status quo. We show that when the reform is anticipated, intertemporal arbitrage arises potentially undermining these properties. Only when the original policy involves both price setting and quantity restrictions can anticipated dual track liberalization maintain its attractiveness. These conditions correspond well to the circumstances faced by transition economies.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/40047/3/wp661.pd

The economics of a multilateral investment agreement.

This paper models a multilateral agreement on investment (MAI) as a coordination device. Multinational enterprises can invest in any number of countries. Without a multilateral investment agreement, expropriation triggers an investment stop by the single MNE. Under a multilateral agreement, expropriation leads to a joint reaction by all MNEs. Switching to such a regime increases worldwide FDI and raises the world interest rate. Distinguishing three groups of countries, we show that industrialized countries experience an outflow of capital but benefit overall due to an increase in repatriated profits. Middle income countries are likely to gain from increased inward FDI, whereas least developed countries lose because they receive less FDI. Our results explain the stylized fact that a multilateral investment agreement was opposed by least developed nations and certain groups in rich countries.

The economics of a multilateral investment agreement

This paper models a multilateral agreement on investment (MAI) as a coordination device. Multinational enterprises can invest in any number of countries. Without a multilateral investment agreement, expropriation triggers an investment stop by the single MNE. Under a multilateral agreement, expropriation leads to a joint reaction by all MNEs. Switching to such a regime increases worldwide FDI and raises the world interest rate. Distinguishing three groups of countries, we show that industrialized countries experience an outflow of capital but benefit overall due to an increase in repatriated profits. Middle income countries are likely to gain from increased inward FDI, whereas least developed countries lose because they receive less FDI. Our results explain the stylized fact that a multilateral investment agreement was opposed by least developed nations and certain groups in rich countries.multilateral investment agreement, FDI, trade policy.