NBER Working Papers · 2026 · [{"name": "Joshua S. Gans", "affiliation": []}]
中文摘要
企业已开始向监管它们的政府授予被动股权。通常的解读是“利益攸关”：政府持股使利润计入国库的资产负债表，因而促使政策趋于宽松。我们表明，一旦股权价格与企业的政策风险敞口在均衡中被内生确定，所有者的同意本身并不能揭示其是否从中受益。出售方会将由此引致的政策改善资本化到价格之中，因此预期中的收购只能以折价成交；拥有议价能力的政府，对风险敞口足够大的企业支付的价格为零；而能够事先提高风险敞口的政府，则会制造出恰好足以将协商价格压至法定下限的风险敞口。股权由此变成了贡赋。尽管如此，全面禁止此类交易并非最优：在风险敞口固定的情况下，被动持股能够纠正政治决策中对股东利益权重不足的问题。福利经由有价许可实现最大化——在固定风险敞口的最优水平上设定持股上限，并将单位价格下限设定为等于基准无持股价值。与持股上限不同，这一价格下限无须了解政府的政治权重。
Abstract
Firms have begun granting passive equity stakes to the government that regulates them. The received reading is “skin in the game:” ownership moves profits onto the treasury's balance sheet, so policy softens. We show that once the price of the stake and the firm's policy exposure are determined in equilibrium, the owners' consent reveals nothing about whether they benefit. Sellers capitalise the induced policy improvement into the price, so an anticipated purchase can only occur at a discount; a government with bargaining power pays zero for a sufficiently exposed firm; and a government that can first raise exposure manufactures precisely enough of it to drive the negotiated price to its legal floor. Equity becomes tribute. Prohibition is nonetheless dominated: at fixed exposure, a passive stake corrects the political underweighting of shareholders. Welfare is maximised by priced permission—an ownership cap at the fixed-exposure optimum and a per-unit price floor equal to baseline no-stake value. The floor, unlike the cap, requires no knowledge of the government's political weights.