Doctoral Dissertation Research in Economics: Do Firms Indeed Pursue Profit Maximization? An Experiment

经济学博士论文研究：企业确实追求利润最大化吗？

• 批准号: 2149219
• 负责人: Charles Noussair
• 金额: $ 0.45万
• 依托单位: University of Arizona
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2022
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2022-04-15 至 2025-03-31
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2149219&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Doctoral; Dissertation; Research; Economics; Do

Profit maximization is a simple tool that economists use to model firms' behaviors; and this assumption of profit maximization is pervasive in economics. However, it is doubtful that profit maximization is the only way to describe firms’ behaviors. In a modern economy, ownership and management are separated for many firms, except for family-owned businesses. Owners are usually shareholders, and they get dividends from their own companies. Managers, such as a CEO and workers, get salaries from companies based on their working performances, indicated as profit and sales, revenue, market shares, or other quantitative indices. For example, suppose a manager’s salary is decided by his sales. Then, he will focus on increasing sales, which leads to a different outcome compared to the case where the manager’s salary is decided based on the firm’s profit. In other words, firms’ behaviors depend on how managers’ incentives are determined. Managers (delegated by owners) make decisions related to firms’ operations, and this does not necessarily result in profit-maximizing behavior. Though there was some research about strategic delegation before, most economic research has assumed profit maximization, without considering strategic delegation. Therefore, this research will examine how firms’ behaviors under strategic delegation are different from those obtained under pure profit maximization. This experimental study uses a two-stage Cournot duopoly game to describe strategic delegation in a market (Vickers, 1985; Fershtman and Judd, 1987; Jansen et al., 2007). In the experiment, there are two firms in a market. Each firm consists of one owner and one manager. In Stage 1, both firm owners choose a contract determining the managers’ incentives: profit delegation (only profit), revenue delegation (profit and weighted revenue), and market share delegation (profit and weighted market share). In Stage 2, managers choose whether or not to collude. Owners’ and managers’ selections will determine market output under strategic delegation. Theoretically, the market outcome under strategic delegation is more aggressive than that under profit maximization. Thus, this study will investigate whether the theoretical results are held under strategic delegation. This research will help understand firms’ behaviors are more/less competitive than analyzed before. For example, Spierdijk and Zaouras (2017) show that the Lerner index obtained by profit maximization assumption is not appropriate to describe market power if firms do not maximize profit. As an extension of such research, this study will use experiments to identify firms’ behaviors that are not profit-maximizing. Also, this project will contribute to improving structural models. Since the BLP model (Berry, Levinsohn, and Pakes, 1995) was proposed, demand estimation has been advanced, but the ‘supply’ part from the model still assumes profit maximization that leads to underestimating the marginal cost. Thus, the results of the experimental study will potentially help improve structural models.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

利润最大化是一种简单的工具，经济器用来对公司的行为进行建模；这种利润最大化的假设在经济学中普遍存在。但是，令人怀疑的是，利润最大化是描述公司行为的唯一方法。在现代经济中，除了家族企业外，许多公司的所有权和管理都分开了。业主通常是股东，他们与自己的公司分开。经理，例如首席执行官和工人，根据公司的工作表现获得薪水，这表明是利润和销售，收入，市场份额或其他定量指数。例如，假设经理的薪水是由他的销售决定的。然后，他将专注于增加销售额，与经理根据公司的利润确定薪水的情况相比，这会导致不同的结果。换句话说，企业的行为取决于如何确定经理的激励措施。经理（由业主委派）做出与公司业务相关的决定，这并不一定会导致利润最大化的行为。尽管以前有一些关于战略代表团的研究，但大多数经济研究都在不考虑战略代表团的情况下提高了利润最大化。因此，这项研究将研究企业在战略代表团下的行为与纯粹利润最大化的行为不同。这项实验研究使用了一个两阶段的Courtnot Doopoly游戏来描述市场中的战略代表团（Vickers，1985； Fershtman和Judd，1987； Jansen等，2007）。在实验中，市场中有两家公司。每个公司由一位所有者和一位经理组成。在第1阶段，两家公司所有者都选择确定经理激励措施的合同：利润授权（仅利润），收入代表团（利润和加权收入）和市场份额代表团（利润和加权市场份额）。在第2阶段，管理人员选择是否合作。业主和经理的选择将确定战略代表团下的市场产出。理论上，战略代表团下的市场结果比最大化的利润更具侵略性。这是这项研究将调查理论结果是否在战略代表团下保持。这项研究将有助于了解公司的行为比以前所分析的更有竞争力。例如，Spierdijk和Zaouras（2017）表明，如果公司不最大化利润，则通过利润最大化假设获得的Lerner指数不适合描述市场权力。作为此类研究的扩展，本研究将使用实验来识别公司的行为，这些行为不是利润最大化。此外，该项目将有助于改善结构模型。由于提出了BLP模型（Berry，Levinsohn和Pakes，1995年），因此需求估算已得到提出，但是该模型的“供应”部分仍然假定利润最大化，从而低估了边际成本。这是实验研究的结果可能有助于改善结构模型。该奖项反映了NSF的法定任务，并通过使用基金会的知识分子优点和更广泛的影响审查标准来评估被认为是宝贵的支持。