Collaborative Research: Macroeconomics and Inequality

很长一段时间以来，现代理论宏观经济学--动态一般均衡理论--建立在代表性代理人假设之上：经济中只有一个消费者和一个企业。尽管这种理论在许多方面都非常有用，但它在几乎所有政策辩论中的一些核心问题上都是沉默的：给定的政策变化对不同的消费者有什么不同的影响，例如富人和穷人，或者“幸运的”和“不幸的”工人？传统的简化形式的宏观经济模型中的失业变量捕捉到了一些这种担忧。不过，显然，对不平等有更广泛的看法是很重要的。近年来，经济学理论和计算方法在分析具有主体异质性的动态一般均衡模型方面取得了长足的进步。这一进展开启了从收入和财富异质性的角度详细说明非常现实的模型并明确研究经济政策影响的可能性。特别是，除了标准的效率问题外，还有可能定量研究政策如何影响不同群体的福利。研究人员之前的工作集中在解决和分析一个宏观经济模型，其中消费者在不同方面存在差异：收入、财富、就业状况和偏好。本研究项目的目的是继续这项工作，并在多个方向上加以扩展。延期的总体目的是更好地了解不平等的决定因素，特别是更全面地了解一些经常讨论的宏观经济政策的影响。最感兴趣的问题是：商业周期的成本和稳定政策的影响；“福利政策”的影响，包括具体或一般补贴和累进税制；生产力(技术)变化与劳动力市场不平等之间的相互作用。为了捕捉不平等的主要数量决定因素，研究人员开发和改进了他们的基线模型。一个重要的目标是进一步利用现有的分析工具来分析这些复杂的宏观经济模型。特别强调计算技术的持续发展。

For a long time, modern theoretical macroeconomics-dynamic general equilibrium theory-has built on the representative agent assumption: there is one consumer in the economy, and one firm. Although this theorizing has been very useful in many ways, it is by definition silent on some of the issues that are central to almost all policy debate: what is the differential impact of a given change in policy on different consumers, for example the rich and the poor, or the `lucky` and `unlucky` workers? The unemployment variable in traditional, reduced form macroeconomic models captured some of this concern. Clearly, though, it is important to have a broader view of inequality. Recently, economic theory and computational methods have undergone substantial progress in the ability to analyze dynamic general equilibrium models with agent heterogeneity. This progress has opened the possibility of specifying quite realistic models in terms of income and wealth heterogeneity and studying the effects of economic policy explicitly. In particular, it is possible to study quantitatively how policy affects the welfare of different groups, besides the standard efficiency concerns. The investigators' previous work focused on solving and analyzing a macroeconomic model where consumers differ in various respects: in income, wealth, employment status, and preferences. The purpose of this research project is to continue this work and extend it in a number of directions. The overall purpose of the extensions is to obtain a better understanding of the determinants of inequality and, in particular, a richer picture of the effects of a number of often discussed macroeconomic policies. The issues of most interested are: the costs of business cycles and the effects of stabilization policy; the effects of `welfare policy`, including specific or general subsidies and progressive tax schedules; and the interactions between productivity (technological) change and inequality through the labor market. In order to capture the main quantitative determinants of inequality, the investigators develop and refine their baseline model. An important goal is to further the analytical tools available for analyzing these complex macroeconomic models. Special emphasis is devoted to the continued development of computational techniques