On the Nature and Consequences of Output Volatility

本研究的目的是分析国民产出波动率与生产效率之间的关系。该项目的第一部分将侧重于建立一个理论一般均衡模型，其中产出波动导致较低的经济增长。已经确定的是，在静态环境下，如果企业必须致力于技术，那么经济中较高的可变性可能导致较低的产出。这一重要结果将通过建立“边做边学”的内生增长模型，推广到增长情境中。对理论结果的支持将通过扩大初步实证工作来提供，该工作表明实际国民生产总值增长的平均值和方差之间存在强烈的负相关关系。该项目的第二部分涉及对第一部分中开发的理论模型的实证调查，该模型将侧重于对美国汽车工业工厂级数据的详细研究。已经收集的数据集载有1972年至1983年期间大约50个装配厂每周的详细工厂数据。这些数据将用于估计成本函数的形式，以了解产出波动对生产效率的影响。这项研究很重要，因为了解技术特征与产出波动之间的关系仍然是研究经济波动的核心。例如，不清楚公司是抑制潜在的波动还是放大它。此外，技术的哪些方面导致了这种行为以及产出波动如何影响企业的生产率也非常不清楚。

The purpose of this research is to analyze the link between the volatility in national output and productive efficiency. The first part of the project will focus on developing a theoretical general-equilibrium-model in which output volatility leads to lower economic growth. It has already been established that in a static setting that if firms must commit to technology, then higher variability in the economy can lead to lower output. This important result will be extended to a growth situation by formulating a model of endogenous growth with learning-by-doing. Support for the theoretical results will be provided by expanding on the preliminary empirical work which shows a strong negative relationship between the average and variance of real GNP growth. The second part of the project involves an empirical investigation of the theoretical models developed in part one, which will focus on a detailed study of plant-level data in the U.S. automobile industry. The data set, which has already been collected, contains detailed weekly plant-level data for approximately fifty assembly plants for the period 1972 to 1983. These data will be used to estimate the form of the cost function in order to understand the effect of output volatility on productive efficiency. This research is important because understanding the relationship between the characteristics of technology and output volatility remains central to the study of economic fluctuations. It is not clear for example whether firms dampen underlying volatility or magnify it. Also, it is very unclear as to what aspects of technology lead to such behavior and how output volatility affects productivity of the firm.