The Silent Lambs:Moral Hazard and Weak Supervision in Pastoral Escrow
With the transition from the acquaintance social norm to the contract market norm,the phenome-non of animal husbandry escrow in traditional agricultural and pastoral villages has become widespread.Agents leverage their information advantage to engage in post-opportunism behavior,while principals adopt a weak supervision strategy to address moral hazard.Taking a case study on Xiaoguai township,Karamay,the present paper conducts a thorough analysis of the background,mechanism,and welfare distribution associat-ed with agents'moral hazard and principals'weak supervision behavior.By analyzing contract design and constructing a game model embedded in the informal system,the research finds that the reasons for weak supervision of surrogate grazing are related to the village industrial structure,the household income composi-tion,and the type of agistment trading market.A comparison between the wage system and the contracting-out system under market norms reveals that weak breach of contract and weak supervision primarily exist in the wage system.Essentially,the"silent lamb"issue pertains to income distribution problems within the contract,where the agent obtains more surplus in the form of fixed and floating wages.The supervision strategy of farmers is influenced by the relative strength of the contract punishment mechanism and the moral reputation mechanism.When the moral reputation mechanism is dominant,weak supervision aligns with economic rationality.To facilitate the transformation of traditional agricultural and pastoral villages,it is imperative to respect the natural progression of village development and industry,acknowledging the crucial role of the informal system.Simultaneously,there is a need to moderately optimize contract design and explore new models of cooperative trusteeship.
husbandry escrowmoral hazardweak supervisiongame theorymechanism of reputationinfor-mal system
万方数据
维普
