Economic Inefficiencies And Separation Reform

As regard to China's TV media, many scholars believed that its institution design is of low inefficiency. Just because of this, we have to carry out systematic reform to the whole industry. However, there are still many other questions left unanswered. For instance, how had the current system been shaped? And what is it for? If there is something going wrong, what should we do next? At present, is there any reformation taking place in this industry? If yes, how is the reformation going on in future?In this dissertation, we use the theory of multitask principal-agent to analyze the aforementioned questions. In brief, the main findings are as below. In China, TV media is not independent, which always plays two roles. One is a machine for political propaganda, and the other is an economic unit for profits. Usually the former is considered as the most important function, and the latter is neglected to a great extent. In this way, the low efficiency in this industry is inevitable. In order to get improved in economic performance, we might well make use of the theory of task design to single out its profit-making role. Undoubtedly, such measures have been taken by many governments nowadays, especially at the provincial level. Nevertheless, due to China's political constraints, we can not expect this kind of reformation will go very fast. In other words, for TV media, there is a long way to go to realize its true role of economic agent.The dissertation is divided into six chapters. Chapter 1 is an introduction. Chapter 2 is an overview for the theory of multi-task principal-agent and its latest development. In Chapter 3, with the theories of public goods and regulation, we reviewed the changes and transformations in TV media industry in developed countries. In Chapter 4, we used multitask principal-agent model to analyze the current system of China's TV media industry. In Chapter 5, with the same model, we discussed the reformation of role-separation in this industry. In Chapter 6, with the case of "channel-separation" of Shiwanglian Company in Shandong Province, we studied the theory above empirically.