ABSTRACT In market economies, agents who provide labour are distinct from investors who own assets. This paper highlights how such an ‘investor ownership’ arrangement mitigates an external finance problem, especially when new ideas and technologies are adopted in production. When agents are credit constrained, assigning asset ownership to investors, and hold up can be seen as a commitment device that leads to better outcomes. The feature that assets can be used to hold up agents is a productive attribute which I model as an output of production: assets which have been used in past production embody this attribute, and assets which have not, do not. The analysis predicts (i) the share of project specific assets owned by investors increases over time, and (ii) project specific asset values increase then decrease over time, both resulting from a staged financing of new projects. The paper emphasises the importance of investor protection: bargaining power vis-à-vis the agents who produce. Lowering investor protection results in lower production scale and TFP, through partial and general equilibrium effects.

中文翻译：

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资产所有权、投资者保护和技术采用

摘要 在市场经济中，提供劳动力的代理人不同于拥有资产的投资者。本文重点介绍了这种“投资者所有权”安排如何缓解外部融资问题，尤其是在生产中采用新思想和技术时。当代理人受到信用约束时，将资产所有权分配给投资者并持有可以被视为一种可以带来更好结果的承诺手段。资产可用于支持代理的特征是一种生产属性，我将其建模为生产的输出：在过去的生产中使用过的资产体现了这种属性，而没有使用过的资产则没有。分析预测 (i) 投资者拥有的项目特定资产的份额随时间增加，以及 (ii) 项目特定资产价值随时间增加然后减少，两者都源于对新项目的分阶段融资。该论文强调了投资者保护的重要性：相对于生产代理人的议价能力。通过局部和一般均衡效应，降低投资者保护会导致生产规模和 TFP 降低。