INCENTIVE CONTRACTS AND TOTAL FACTOR PRODUCTIVITY*
提出一个交易成本理论来解释全要素生产率，认为不对称信息和交易成本下，生产率需通过激励合同诱导，并分析了合同随经济增长的内生变化及社会特征对激励强度的影响。
We propose a transactions cost theory of total factor productivity (TFP). In a world with asymmetric information and transactions costs, productivity must be induced by incentive schemes. Labor contracts trade off marginal benefits and costs of effort. The latter include, in addition to the workers' marginal disutility of effort, organizational costs and rents. As the economy grows, contracts change endogenously, inducing higher effort and productivity. Transactions costs are also affected by societal characteristics that determine the power of incentives. Differences in these characteristics may explain cross‐economy productivity differences. Numerical experiments demonstrate the model's consistency with time‐series and cross‐country observations.