财经研究  2018, Vol. 44 Issue (9): 109-122

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#### 文章信息

 财经研究2018年44卷第9期

Li Xiang, Huang Annan, Li Xinwei.
“名不副实”与“名副其实”问题的一个经济学解析——以食品安全为例
An economic explanation for “unworthy of the name” and “worthy of the name”: taking the food safety problem as an example

Journal of Finance and Economics, 2018, 44(9): 109-122.

### 文章历史

《财经研究》
2018第44卷第9期
“名不副实”与“名副其实”问题的一个经济学解析——以食品安全为例

An Economic Explanation for “Unworthy of the Name” and “Worthy of the Name”: Taking the Food Safety Problem as an Example
Li Xiang, Huang Annan, Li Xinwei
School of Economics，Nanjing Audit University，Nanjing 211815，China
Summary: In recent years, some domestic food enterprises commit to take vertical integration and show their high investment in quality control, whereas the actual quality of their product is not satisfactory. In order to provide an economic explanation for this phenomenon, we develop an asymmetric information game with ex ante investment in quality control and ex post liability. In this model, the enterprise first makes investment on its potential of quality control. The investment is observable and determines the enterprise’s upper bound of quality control. The actual effort in quality control which the enterprise makes, however, is its private information. The product is either safe or unsafe once the enterprise chooses its actual quality control, and the possibility of safe product is higher with more efforts on quality control. When the unsafe product is sold, it will perhaps cause health accidents. The enterprise may be punished for its negligence after the accidents. We find that, due to its private information in quality control, the enterprise is likely to leave part of its investment unused when the investment is high and its actual efforts on quality control is lower than the potential implied by its investment. Therefore, the enterprise may make itself " unworthy of the name” in quality control, which leads to " strategic overcapacity” in quality investment. Furthermore, the enterprise will be encouraged to become " worthy of the name” in quality control by enhancing the supervision and increasing the penalty for its negligence in quality control.　　Compared with the existing literature, this paper has two marginal theoretical contributions. First, it deepens our understanding of the relationship between vertical integration and product quality. On the one hand, this paper obtains a positive relationship between these two variables which is similar to most of the literature in this field. On the other hand, however, we show that this positive relationship would be diminishing with higher degree of integration if the enterprise can choose its actual efforts after investing its potential on quality control through vertical integration. Second, this paper is related to the literature on quality signaling by advertising since the investment in our model can be regarded as a signal of the enterprise’s actual quality and its product quality. Different from this branch of literature, the investment is neither purely informative advertising nor dissipative advertising since it implies the potential of the enterprise’s quality control. This paper shows that in equilibrium this " partly” informative investment may become a positive yet imperfect signal of product quality. This paper induces some policy implications. First, it indicates that when the supervision and punishment for negligence are strengthened, the enterprise will become " worthy of the name”, i.e. the enterprise will make full use of its potential and provide high level of quality control. Second, the enterprise may strategically waste some of its capital and cause inefficiency in quality control if it merely gets financial support from the government without matched supervision. Third, besides its implications on the food safety issues, our findings can also provide some insights and policy suggestions for other fields, such as the domestic policy system in research funding and the targeted poverty reduction.
Key words: " unworthy of the name”    " worthy of the name”    capacity investment    ex post liability    quality control

（一）纵向一体化与产品质量关系的理论研究

（二）广告投资显示产品质量的理论研究

（三）国内食品安全问题的相关理论研究

 图 1 博弈时序

 变量与参数 含义 取值范围与数量（函数）关系 ${x}$ 企业在纵向整合（质控能力）上的投资量决定了企业在质控上的潜能 ${x \in \left[ {0,1} \right]}$ ${e}$ 企业实际付出的质控努力水平受质控潜能的制约 ${e \in \left[ {0,1} \right],\;e \leqslant x}$ ${\tilde e}$ 根据显性的整合投资量，理性消费者主观推测的企业质控努力水平 ${\tilde e \in \left[ {0,1} \right],\;\tilde e = \tilde e\left( x \right)}$ ${H}$ 高质量（安全）产品带给消费者的效用 ${L < 0 < H}$ ${L}$ 低质量（不安全）产品带给消费者的效用 ${\mu }$ 企业无法通过整合与自身努力加以控制的外部低质量冲击 ${\mu \in \left( {0,1} \right)}$ ${r}$ 不安全产品在消费者使用后出事的概率 ${r \in \left( {0,1} \right)}$ ${k}$ 产品出事后，企业在质控上的过失被外部监督者取证查实的概率 ${k \in \left( {0,1} \right)}$ ${K}$ 提供不安全产品在事后被惩罚的概率 ${K = r \cdot k}$ ${F}$ 被查实存在质控过失后，企业受到的惩罚 ${F > 0}$ ${t}$ 整合投资的边际成本 ${t > 0}$ ${c}$ 质控努力的边际成本系数 ${c > 0}$

（一）产品质量安全的决定因素与技术成本

（二）产品安全事故、调查取证与惩罚

（三）消费者效用、企业利润与产品交易

（一）社会最优结果

 $\mathop {\max }\limits_{x,e} W\left( {x,e} \right) = \mathop {\max }\limits_{x,e} \left( {H - L} \right)\mu e - \left( {tx + c{e^2}} \right),e,x \in \left[ {0,1} \right],\;e \geqslant x$

（二）不对称信息情形的均衡

1. 没有事后追责的情况

2. 存在事后追责的情形

（1）投资 $x = 1$ 时企业的质控努力。

（2）投资 $x < 1$ 时的均衡。

$x = 0$ 时，消费者能够预见到企业没有能力实施质量控制（ $e = 0$ ），产品必然低质量，从而不会购买，此时市场崩溃。下面考察 $0 < x < 1$ 的情形。消费者根据观察到的企业投资形成对企业质控努力的推测 $\tilde e\left( x \right)$ ，在均衡时，主观推测与实际选择一致，即 $\tilde e\left( x \right) = {e^{**}}\left( x \right)$ 。类似上面第（1）情形的推理， ${e^{**}}\left( x \right)$ 必然满足：

 ${e^{**}}\left( x \right) \equiv \arg \min C\left( {e,x} \right)。$ (1)

 {e^{**}}\left( x \right) = \left\{ {\begin{aligned} & \;{x,}\;{x \leqslant \displaystyle\frac{{KF}}{{2c + \mu KF}}} \\ &\; {\displaystyle\frac{{\left( {1 + \mu x} \right)KF}}{{2\left( {c + \mu KF} \right)}},}\;{x > \displaystyle\frac{{KF}}{{2c + \mu KF}}} \end{aligned}} \right. (2)

 图 2 能力投资与质控努力的均衡组合

（三）比较静态与政策推论

* 本文得到了“江苏省研究生科研创新计划项目（KYCX17_1338，KYCX18_1693）” 与江苏高校“青蓝工程”的资助。作者特别感谢两位匿名审稿专家提出的宝贵意见和建议。当然，文责自负。

① 叶云等（2015）基于公司年度报告与CSMAR中国上市公司财务数据库2010—2012年的数据，利用投入产出法测算了包括伊利、光明、三元等乳制品企业在内的25家畜牧业上市企业的纵向整合度，发现乳制品加工企业的后向整合程度有所上升。冯怡欣（2017）采取类似方法分析了12家畜牧业上市企业2013—2015年的数据发现，乳制品企业的后向整合程度明显较高。

② 《经济参考报》2014年10月10日“乳企自建奶源大多只是做做样子：专家称成本负担过大违反产业发展规律”，参见网页新闻http://dz.jjckb.cn/www/pages/webpage2009/html/2014-10/10/content_96404.htm?div=-1

③ 报告摘录，可参见各门户网站转载，链接如下http://www.sohu.com/a/61007655_377382

④ 严格来说，产品的真实质量与消费者推测的质量是两个不同的概念。特别在短期内，两者很可能存在明显的差异。但是，自2009年以来，进口品牌已经连续多年占据国内婴幼儿奶粉消费市场过半的份额。消费者长时期内具有稳定的行为，很难否认其背后没有理性考量的成分。对此，本文提供了一个基于消费者理性预期的分析。在模型均衡中，企业的实际质控努力低于其投资蕴含的质控潜能，消费者的质量信念在期望值的意义下恰好与产品真实质量一致。事实上，对于不完全信息动态博弈，均衡时要求信息弱势者的信念在贝叶斯法则的意义下与信息优势者的实际策略相一致，这也是用于分析这类博弈精炼贝叶斯均衡概念的基本要求。特别感谢匿名审稿人指明以上概念以及提出的相关建议。

⑤ 从侵权法领域著名的“汉德公式”的角度（史晋川，2014，pp. 162—163），也可以为本文模型的这一设定进行辩护，即在质控投资水平不足（ ${x < 1}$ ）的情况下，企业无法实施完全质控（ ${e = 1}$ ），可将完全质控成本视为无限大，超过因质控不足而引起的社会损失（ ${H - L}$ ）。根据汉德公式，此时企业不应为产品质量问题承担责任。

⑥ 在现实中，政府监管部门在生产加工各环节都会进行内容各有侧重的抽检。但是，一方面，就近年来国内食品安全的现状而言，民众对监管部门单方面的监督缺乏足够信任，这造成了国内食品企业陷入集体性的信任危机（李想和石磊，2014；王永钦等，2014）。另一方面，龚强等（2015）指出，地方政府受制于经济增长、就业与社会稳定等方面的“政策性负担”，有可能包庇企业的低质量行为，引起“规制俘获”。这意味着，如果在政府监管部门组织的例行抽检中表现不佳，企业未必会付出足够的代价。缺乏对政府单方面监管质量的信任，预见到政府监管者的事前监督对企业缺乏足够约束力，理性消费者就未必会重视官方的例行抽检结果。消费者这种“理性忽略（rational ignorance）”让企业意识到，相对于政府部门事前单方面抽检，事后的多方监督及其可能引起的产品责任风险更可能影响企业的质控决策。为抓住影响消费者理性决策与企业质控决策的关键因素，本文模型重点考虑事后监督与责任追究环节，聚焦于分析这一关键因素如何影响企业与消费者的理性决策，为国内食品行业纵向整合投资与实际质控上“名不副实”的现象提供了一种解释。

⑦ 受篇幅限制，本文做了适当压缩，对论文模型的推导细节有兴趣的读者可向作者索要完整版本。

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