The Boundaries of the Firms as Information Barriers
2005/02/15
研討會日期 : 2005-02-15
時間 : 15:00
主講人 : Prof. Chou Szu Wen
地點 : B棟110室
演講者簡介 : Prof. Chou Szu Wen 為Ph.D. in Economics，University of California at Los Angeles (2002)。
目前為香港中文大學助理教授。
其主要研究領域為Contract Theory及Organization Theory。
演講摘要 : Existing theories generally define the firm as a collection of physical assets, and hence cannot explain it from a human-asset perspective, which is of particular importance for understanding human-capital intensive firms. To fill in this gap, a new theory is developed in the paper, based on the idea that firm boundaries may work as information barriers. A firm is defined as a collection of human-assets, the owner of which work so close together that outside markets cannot distinguish them clearly. Under Nash bargaining, when investment externalities are relatively great (small), integration increases efficiency, and the true relationship specificity - the discount caused by the break up of the relationship - alleviates (aggravates) the hold-up problem. Under alternating-offers bargaining, the forgoing results are not reversed in general (in contrast to the case in property rights theory). In addition, a change in firm boundaries is more likely to matter if the businesses involved are more separated originally, or more diversified.
