2008年8月

IZA DP编号3626:莱茵兰出口?

《国际税收与公共财政》,2009,16 (5),710-726

我们赞成公司的股东模式,主要有三个原因。首先,服务于多个利益相关者会导致产权定义不清。利益相关者之间看似公平的妥协很容易演变成利益相关者之间关于公司最终目标的永久斗争。在许多情况下,模糊的莱茵兰原则不再为工人提供太多保护。其次,让工人获得企业盈余的索赔权,会提高就业投资的资本成本,从而损害求职者的地位,包括新进入劳动力市场的人。第三,也是最重要的一点,让股东成为公司的最终所有者,可以最大限度地分散公司特有的风险。全球化加剧了竞争,从而增加了企业特有的风险,而资本市场的全球化也极大地扩大了企业特有风险多样化的范围。在资本市场上分散这种风险是一种有效的社会保险形式。减少工人对企业剩余的索取权可以被视为解放工人的下一步。工人的安全不是来自雇佣他们的公司,而是来自他们自身人力资本的价值。 In such a world, global trade in corporate control, global competition and creative destruction associated with these developments are more legitimate. Coordination in wage bargaining and collective norms on what is proper compensation play an important role in reducing the claim of workers on the firm’s surplus, thereby protecting workers against firm-specific risks. Indeed, in Denmark, workers bear less firm-specific risk than workers in the United States do. Collective action thus has an important role to play. Politicians, however, also face the temptation to please voters and incumbent workers with short-run gains at the expense of exposing workers to firm-specific risks and reducing job creation. This is why corporate governance legislation that gives moral legitimacy to the claim of insiders on the surplus of the firm is damaging. The transition from the Rhineland model (in which management serves the interests of all stakeholders) towards the shareholder model is fraught with difficulties. While society reaps long-run gains in efficiency, in the short run a generation of insiders has to give up their rights without benefiting from increased job creation and higher starting wages. Whereas the claims of older workers on the surplus of a firm may thus have some legitimacy, younger cohorts should be denied such moral claims. These problems require extreme political skill to solve. In particular, they may require some grandfathering provisions or temporary explicit transfers from younger to older generations.