时间：10月29日（周四）13:15 p.m.-14:30

地点：北京大学经济学院302

主持老师：石凡奇（经院）；胡岠（国发院）

参与老师：胡涛，石凡奇（经院）；汪浩，胡岠，邢亦青（国发院）；翁翕，刘烁（光华）

主讲人：陆卓然（Associate Professor, Shanghai Jiao Tong University）

题目：Retain or Release: Relational Knowledge Transfer with Externalities

摘要：

We study optimal relational contracts for knowledge transfer with externalities. An expert seeks to trade her knowledge for the labor of a cash-constrained novice. As the novice acquires knowledge, his outside option increases, as does the externality loss he would impose on the expert after separation. The expert therefore faces a trade-off between the cost of retaining the novice and the externality loss from releasing him. When knowledge transfers are contractible, the optimal contract takes the form of a finite apprenticeship during which the novice’s knowledge stock grows at the interest rate and wages are zero. The parties separate at graduation when retention is sufficiently costly relative to externality losses. Otherwise, permanent retention with complete knowledge transfer is optimal. Conditional on separation, sufficiently strong externalities induce incomplete transfer. When knowledge transfers are non-contractible, trade becomes harder to sustain and requires permanent retention with complete knowledge transfer. Moreover, the expert may need to supplement knowledge transfers with positive wages to retain the novice before graduation. Compared with the contractible case, the initial knowledge gift is smaller and knowledge transfer is slower, reducing total welfare. Unlike in the contractible case, stronger externalities can raise the expert’s profit by strengthening her commitment to knowledge transfers.

主讲人介绍：

Zhuoran Lu is an Associate Professor of Economics at Antai College of Economics and Management, Shanghai Jiao Tong University. He is a microeconomic theorist who studies contract theory, organizational economics, and information economics. His recent research includes optimal pricing of signaling goods, the design of network-based peer monitoring, and the role of relational contracts in innovation and knowledge transfer. He has published in the Journal of Economic Theory and MIS Quarterly.