On the Nature and Consequences of Output Volatility

产出波动的本质和后果

• 批准号: 9022947
• 负责人: Valerie Ramey
• 金额: $ 7.74万
• 依托单位: University of California-San Diego
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 1991
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 1991-07-01 至 1994-06-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=9022947&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Nature; Consequences; Output; Volatility

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.

本研究的目的是分析国民产出波动与生产效率之间的联系。该项目的第一部分将专注于开发一个理论上的一般均衡模型，在该模型中，产出波动会导致较低的经济增长。已经确定，在静态环境下，如果企业必须致力于技术，那么经济中更高的变异性可能会导致较低的产出。这一重要成果将通过制定边做边学的内生增长模型扩展到增长情景。对前期实证工作的扩展将为理论结果提供支持，这些工作表明实际GNP增长的平均值和方差之间存在很强的负相关关系。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，重点是详细研究美国汽车行业的工厂级数据。已收集的数据集包含1972至1983年间大约50家装配厂的每周详细数据。这些数据将被用来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，因为了解技术特征和产出波动性之间的关系仍然是研究经济波动的核心。例如，尚不清楚企业是抑制了潜在波动性，还是放大了波动性。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公司的生产率，目前还不清楚。