我国食品安全监管者激励失灵的原因——基于委托代理理论的解释

Incentive Incompatibility of China's Food Safety Regulator:An Explanation Based on Principal-Agent Theory

本文构建了食品安全的消费者与监管者之间的委托代理模型,在激励相容的机制设计标准下,分析了我国食品安全监管失灵的深层制度原因。结果表明,我国现行的食品安全监管机制中采用的结果考核制、检测权利与行政处罚权力合一两种不合理的制度安排,不仅会导致监管者检测的食品安全信息缺乏有效性,还会导致监管者不愿公开真实信息甚至汇报虚假信息。这些制度安排严重制约了监管者切实履行向消费者汇报真实有效的食品安全信息的职责。在此基础上,本文提出了改进对监管者的结果考核制、分离检测权与处罚权等一系列政策建议。

Although a great amount of work on improving food safety have been carried out by China＇s government in recent years, the current situation of food safety in China is still rigorous. A prominent issue in China＇ s food safety regulation is the absence of supervision. With the fact that quite a few food safety incidents are exposed by consumers and journalists rather than regulators, consumers are forfeiting their trust in regulators. In present paper, we develop a principal-agent model between consumers （the principal） and food safety regulator （the agent） to conduct a theoretical analysis on why failure of supervision exists. Within the framework of incentive compatibility from mechanism design theory, we show particular interests in causes regarding institutional arrangement. Our results show that several arrangements in China＇ s current food safety regulation system are improper and regulators＇ incen- tives might be strongly distorted. One existing arrangement is result-based-assessment, that is, food safety regulators＇ performance are evaluated by the true level of food safety. Our analysis indicate that result-based-assessment will undoubtedly twist regulators＇ motivation and trigger deregulation. We point out that the direct responsibility of providing safe food belongs to food producers and practitioners in food circulation industry rather than food safety regulators. And the responsibility of regulators is specified as reporting true and valid inspection information to consumers, but not directly ensuring food safety. Actually, result-based-assessment partially transfer producers＇ responsibility of ensuring food safety to regula- tors. Under this system, the more efforts are devoted to inspection and the more unfavorable information is reported, the more punishment instead of reward are imposed on regulators. With this regard, regulators have no incentives to put any efforts in supervision and regulators selectively report good news instead of bad news, thus avoiding punish- ments from consumers. We further indicate result-based-assessment causes even more serious incentive incompatibil- ity when consumers can only get information from regulators and when there are many regulators who take charge of different processes in food circulation. Another existing arrangement is the monopoly of supervision power, namely, the power of inspection and the power of punishment are centralized in the hand of regulators. Among the participants in food safety market, consum- ers are in the most disadvantageous situation of information, while producers the most advantageous. This is why con- sumers entrust regulators to supervise food production and circulation, and conduct sampling inspect and report in- spection results. Theoretically,the ownership of administrative fines on producers＇ providing unqualified food be- longs to consumers. But in practice, regulators hold the power of administrative punishment. As such, the power of inspection prompts regulators to acquire food safety information, and the power of punishment further assign values to the information. As a result, regulators on the one hand conceal or falsely report inspection information to consum- ers, on the other hand seek rents from producers. As long as the rent is lower than the loss of recalling foods, produc- ers also have incentives to bribe the regulators. The collusion between producers and regulators seriously aggravate food safety and damage consumers＇ interests. According to our analysis, in order to improve supervision ulator＇ s earnings from food safety information, since all kinds efficiency, an essential requirement is to insulate reg- of potential profits regarding food safety information might give rise to regulators＇ concealing information or even reporting false information. Firstly, we suggest recon- struction on current assessment system of regulators＇ performance. Regulator＇s responsibility shall be explicitly specified in advance as ensuring the truthfulness and validity of inspection information instead of ensuring food safe- ty. And accordingly, regulators＇ performance evaluation should strictly refer to their inspection effort, but not refer to their reported food inspection information. Secondly, the power of inspection and the power of administrative punishment should be assigned to different departments, and these departments are supposed to maintain administrative independence between each other.