Markets and Institutions: A Matching Approach

雷米9630270经济学家长期以来一直关注市场机构和非市场机构在进行交易时的权衡问题。拟议中的研究通过明确分析市场互动对特定于代理人的交易机构的确定和业绩的影响，取得了新的突破，基于三个关键假设：(1)形成生产性关系要求代理人在反映市场互动的匹配过程中与其他代理人会面；(2)新匹配的代理人进行特定于其关系且不能明确签约的投资；以及(3)生产性关系随着时间的推移而持续，需要也不可收缩的持续努力。关键的洞察是，市场力量通过影响代理人提供持续努力的激励来塑造交易关系。该研究开发了一个数学一般均衡框架，包括(1)各种组织形式下的双边投资和贸易模型；(2)反映不对称、搜索努力和新代理人流入可能性的匹配模型；以及(3)代理人获得特定投资和创造新生产性资产所需资源的资本市场模型。这开发了框架的初步版本，并报告了一系列新的分析结果，说明了该方法的力量。首先，市场力量可以抵消投资不完全收缩所产生的投资不足激励，在市场摩擦为正的水平上，可能会出现第一最好的效率。其次，减少市场摩擦可能会破坏现有贸易关系的稳定，从而产生不利的短期福利影响，而且这种减少也会使长期福利最小化。第三，市场力量影响代理人对一体化组织形式与非一体化组织形式的选择。该项目研究了以生产关系质量的不确定性和/或不完全信息为特征的环境中的组织形式、匹配、重新谈判和福利，以及在宏观经济学问题上的应用，包括经济增长、政策传播和名义刚性。

Ramey 9630270 Economists have long been concerned with the tradeoffs between market and nonmarket institutions with respect to carrying out transactions. The proposed research breaks new ground by explicitly analyzing the impact of market interaction on the determination and performance of agent-specific trading institutions, based on three key hypotheses: (1) forming productive relationships requires that agents meet with other agents in a matching process that reflects market interaction; (2) newly-matched agents make investments that are specific to their relationship and that cannot be contracted upon explicitly; and (3) productive relationships continue through time and require ongoing effort that is also not contractible. The key insight is that market forces shape trading relationships through their effect on the agents' incentives to provide ongoing effort. The research develops a mathematical general-equilibrium framework consisting of (1) models of bilateral investment and trading under a variety of organizational forms; (2) a matching model reflecting possibilities for asymmetries, search effort and inflow of new agents; and (3) a model of the capital market in which agents obtain resources needed for specific investment as well as creation of new productive assets. This develops a preliminary version of the framework, and reports a range of new analytical results illustrating the power of the approach. First, market forces can counteract the underinvestment incentive deriving from incomplete contractibility of investment, and first-best efficiency can emerge at a positive level of market friction. second, reducing market friction can have adverse short-run welfare effects by destabilizing existing trading relationships, and such reductions can also minimize long-run welfare. Third, market forces affect agents choice of integrated versus nonintegrated organizational forms. The project studies organizational form, matching, renegotiation and welfare in settings characteri zed by uncertainty and/or incomplete information regarding the quality of productive relationships, as well as applications to issues in macroeconomics, including economic growth, policy propagation and nominal rigidity.