Topics in Empirical Macroeconomics

该项目涉及两个主题的研究。第一个项目是对熟练工人和非熟练工人之间工资溢价不断增长的理论进行应用分析，重点是非熟练劳动力的相对价格和资本设备的相对价格之间的相互作用。这个项目的基本主题是，非熟练工人和资本设备是很好的替代品，资本设备和熟练工人是相对互补的。这一理论表明，非熟练劳动力价格的下降将与资本相对价格的下降联系在一起。建立了明确区分资本结构和设备以及熟练和非熟练劳动力的生产函数，并使用CPS的年度数据估计了生产函数的参数。然后，生产函数被用来评估该理论与工资溢价历史变化的一致性程度。初步结果表明，设备价格的快速下降，加上资本存量的强劲增长，是过去30年来熟练劳动力和非熟练劳动力之间工资差距日益扩大的重要因素。第二个主题是开发一个评估动态均衡模型的框架，并将该框架应用于宏观经济学和国际经济学中最新模型的分析。结果表明，该框架是分析动态一般均衡经济的一种灵活且非常有用的工具，因为它建立在所有模型都被错误指定的现实假设之上。此外，该框架是图形化的，允许用户直观和快速地评估模型表现良好的维度，它提供了一套通用工具，可供具有不同目标和兴趣的研究人员使用，并开发了在小样本中进行推理的新程序。还对方法进行了扩展，并将其应用于实质性的经济模型。

This project involves research on two topics. The first project is an applied analysis of a theory of the growing wage premium between skilled and unskilled workers, with a focus on the interaction of the relative price of unskilled labor and the relative price of capital equipment. The basic theme in this project is that unskilled workers and capital equipment are good substitutes, and that capital equipment and skilled workers are relatively complementary. This theory suggests that declines in the price of unskilled labor will be tied to declines in the relative price of capital. A production function that explicitly distinguishes between capital structures and equipment, and between skilled and unskilled labor is developed, and the parameters of the production function are estimated using annual data from the CPS. The production function is then used to evaluate the extent to which the theory is consistent with historical variations in the wage premium. Preliminary results suggest that the rapid decline in the price of equipment, coupled with strong growth in the stock of capital, has been an important factor in growing wage inequality between skilled and unskilled labor over the past 30 years. The second topic is the development of a framework for evaluating dynamic equilibrium models, and the application of this framework to the analysis of recent models in macroeconomics and international economics. It is shown that the framework is a flexible and very useful tool for analyzing dynamic general equilibrium economies, as it is based on the realistic assumption that all models are misspecified. In addition, the framework is graphical, allowing the user to assess visually and quickly the dimensions on which the model performs well, it provides a common set of tools that can be used by researchers with different objectives and interests, and it develops new procedures for conducting inference in small samples. Extensions of the methodology, and applications to substantive economic models are also undertaken.