要素禀赋不对称与企业的性质

The Asymmetry of Factors' Endowment and the Nature of the Firm

新制度经济学中关于企业性质的流行观点是企业产生于要素市场对中间产品市场的替代,但是这种“替代”的观点解释不了现实中企业、要素市场、中间产品市场互相促进、共同扩大这一状况。本文引入了“要素禀赋不对称”这一概念,在个体生产者处于要素禀赋不对称状态中时,即使不存在中间产品市场或中间产品市场的交易费用低于要素市场的交易费用的情况,企业也必然产生。出于同样的原因,作为要素市场交易结果的企业能够促进中间产品市场的迅速发展。要素市场与中间产品市场之间的共同发展是常态,而“替代”只能是支流。

A prevailing proposition on the nature of the firm in the new institutional literatures is that the firm comes from the substitution of the market of factors for the market of commodities. But in fact, the scale of the firm and the market of factors expand as well as the market of commodities, whieh can＇ t be explained by the substitutional logic. This paper employs “the asymmetry of factors＇ endowment” to develop a new framework. We find that a firm can come into being in the absence of a market of middle-produets, or when the transaction costs of factor contracts is higher than that of commodity contracts. When the asymmetry of factors＇ endowment is taken into account, the coexpansion of the firm, the market of factors and the market of middle-products is found to be a general rule and the substitutional logic only lies in special cases.