Finn Kydland and Edward Prescott''s Contribution to the Theory of Macroeconomic Policy
Finn Kydland and Edward Prescott''s Contribution to the Theory of Macroeconomic Policy
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芬恩·基德兰和爱德华·普雷斯科特对宏观经济政策理论的贡献
DOI：
10.1111/j.1467-9442.2005.00404.x
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发表时间：
2005
期刊：
影响因子：
--
通讯作者：
G. Tabellini
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
G. Tabellini
芬恩·基德兰德（Finn Kydland）和艾德·普雷斯科特（Ed Prescott）以两项开创性的贡献改变了宏观经济学领域。一个是最优策略规则的时间不一致性思想。第二是他们对业务波动的分析。这两项贡献深刻地改变了我们在学术研究和实际决策中对宏观经济问题的思考方式。虽然他们对商业波动的分析是持续了20多年的研究成果，但政策的时间不一致性的想法源于一篇论文，基德兰德和普雷斯科特（Kydland and Prescott，1977）。在写了那篇论文之后，基德兰德和普雷斯科特除了在一篇关于资本税的方法论论文中没有再回到这个话题上，参见Kydland and Prescott（1980）。然而，这一思想是如此重要和强大，以至于开辟了宏观经济学研究的一条全新路线，改变了我们研究和实施经济政策的方式。很少有一篇论文对经济研究和经济决策实践产生如此深远的影响。在本文中，我讨论了时间不一致的想法，它是如何制定的基德兰和普雷斯科特，以及为什么它的影响是如此重要。第二节将基德兰德和普雷斯科特的贡献置于宏观经济政策理论的背景下。第三节分析了时间不一致概念的早期提法。第四节总结了基德兰和普雷斯科特的贡献及其主要影响。第五节简要考虑了它们对后续研究的影响，第六节总结了这些影响。
Finn Kydland and Ed Prescott have transformed the field of macroeconomics with two path-breaking contributions. One is the idea of time inconsistency of optimal policy rules. The second is their analysis of business fluctuations. Both contributions have profoundly changed the way we think about macroeconomic problems, both in academic research and in practical policymaking. But while their analysis of business fluctuations is the result of a research effort that lasted more than two decades, the idea of time inconsistency of policy stems from a single paper, Kydland and Prescott (1977). After writing that paper, Kydland and Prescott have not returned to this topic except in a methodological paper on capital taxation; see Kydland and Prescott (1980). Yet, the idea was so important and powerful as to open up a whole new line of research in macroeconomics, that changed the way we study and implement economic policy. Rarely has a single paper had such a profound effect on economic research and the practice of economic policymaking. In this paper, I discuss the idea of time inconsistency, how it was formulated by Kydland and Prescott, and why its implications are so important. Section II sets the stage and places the contribution by Kydland and Prescott in the context of the theory of macroeconomic policy. Section III analyses earlier formulations of the notion of time inconsistency. Section IV summarises Kydland and Prescott’s contribution and its main implications. Section V briefly considers their impact on subsequent research and Section VI concludes.