董事会里的"战争"——序贯与惩罚机制下董事会决策行为的实验分析

本文利用实验研究方法首次在独立董事人数占优的董事会中引入序贯和惩罚机制,探讨了董事会科学决策的促成因素及制度环境.实验结果发现,序贯与惩罚机制引入后,董事决策正确率较静态实验分别提高了39.09%和34.26%,但两者的作用原理不同:序贯机制着力于改善董事会的私人信息结构,通过将独立董事"知情化",从而使决策行为独立于董事类型;惩罚机制则是利用独立董事的社会偏好进行治理,使决策行为与项目类型无关.与Gillette等人的研究结果不同,好项目的通过率并不是100%,原因可能与序贯时的针锋相对策略、惩罚时的社会偏好存在有关.

War in the Boardroom: Experimental Studies on Sequential Decision-making, Penalty and Board Behaviors

This paper introduces sequential decision-making and penalty into the board with dominative number of independent directors firstly employing experimental approach. We discuss the acceptable environment and the factors in which may in favor of rational behavior of the board. The results show, first, there is no more effective decision made in the board only and only if with dominative number of independent directors; second, with the sequential game and penalty the rate of rejection for bad program was up to 100%, this outcome is consistent with Gillette's results. As to the good program, the accepting ratio was 88.0% and 81.5% respectively. With the sequential game only, since the grim strategy in the shot term and tit for tat strategy in the long term by the directors, the accepting ratio of good program was not up to 100%. With the penalty, the exits of penalty with cost was the evidence of social preference of directors, this finding was not referred to in the Gillette's study. In conclusion, accuracy of board decisions increased 39.09% and 34.26% with sequential decision-making and penalty respectively. But the two institutions have different theories: sequential decision-making changes the information structure of the board; it could inform the independent directors to get both types of director make same decisions. Penalty can improve the accuracy of "insiders" when the project is bad by using independent directors' social preference. Good projects are not 100% passed because of tit-for-tat strategy when sequential and social preference when penalty. That is different from the studies of Gillette.