Collaborative Research: Macroeconomics and Inequality

长期以来，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上：经济中有一个消费者和一个企业。尽管这一理论在很多方面都非常有用，但从定义上讲，它对几乎所有政策辩论的一些核心问题保持沉默：对于不同的消费者，例如富人和穷人，或者“幸运”和“不幸”的工人，特定政策变化的不同影响是什么？传统的、简化形式的宏观经济模型中的失业变量反映了这种担忧。不过，很明显，从更广泛的角度看待不平等是很重要的。近年来，经济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。这一进展使人们有可能在收入和财富异质性方面指定相当现实的模型，并明确研究经济政策的影响。特别是，除了标准的效率问题之外，还可以定量地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，在这个模型中，消费者在收入、财富、就业状况和偏好等方面存在差异。本研究项目的目的是继续这项工作，并将其扩展到多个方向。扩展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。最令人感兴趣的问题是：商业周期的成本和稳定政策的影响；“福利政策”的影响，包括具体的或一般的补贴和累进税表；以及生产率（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定量决定因素，研究人员开发并完善了他们的基线模型。一个重要的目标是进一步发展分析这些复杂宏观经济模型的分析工具。特别强调的是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