Growth and Cycles

增长和周期

• 批准号: 0241350
• 负责人: Boyan Jovanovic
• 金额: $ 24.57万
• 依托单位: New York University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2003
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2003-06-01 至 2006-05-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0241350&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Growth; Cycles

The goal of this project is to develop a model in which there is an incentive to adopt a new technology because it increases productivity, but the new technology may require a large adjustment in the level of human capital. The model will be used to explain volatility of growth, growth-rate disasters, counter cyclical human capital accumulations and other empirical observations about economic growth.Real Business Cycle research is a large and very useful literature on the relationship between business cycles, economic growth and technology shocks. But almost all this research assumes that the technology shocks are exogenous and studies how the economy responds to them. This project develops a model in which technology is chosen, total factor productivity depends on current technology and human capital, and human capital can be upgraded at a cost to better match future technology. In this model technology adoption is risky. The risk is one of possibly having the wrong skills and therefore of bearing large costs of retooling and there are additional risks. So choosing a better technology increases tomorrow's productivity directly, but increases the risk that resources will have to be spent to upgrade human capital to keep pace. If growth imposes risks, then it seems like we should observe a positive relation between the growth rate and its volatility. Yet the data show a negative relation between the two over time. This project develops a model that explains this, in that higher volatility leads to a greater mismatch between future technologies and skills and greater retooling costs. The model can be decentralized and extended so that it fits the distribution of growth rates of output, consumption, investment, stock prices, and interest rates observed in post-war U.S. data and elsewhere. Business cycles are partly an outcome of technology choices. This project studies how policy implications hinge on external effects in the use of technology and in the adjustment of human capital.

本项目的目标是开发一种模式，在这种模式中，采用新技术是有动力的，因为它提高了生产力，但新技术可能需要对人力资本水平进行大幅度调整。 该模型将用于解释增长波动、增长率灾难、反周期人力资本积累和其他关于经济增长的经验观察。真实的商业周期研究是关于商业周期、经济增长和技术冲击之间关系的大量非常有用的文献。 但几乎所有的研究都假设技术冲击是外生的，并研究经济如何应对它们。 该项目开发了一个模型，其中选择技术，全要素生产率取决于当前的技术和人力资本，人力资本可以以一定的成本升级，以更好地匹配未来的技术。 在这种模式下，采用技术是有风险的。 风险是可能有错误的技能，因此承担大量的成本重新装备，还有额外的风险。 因此，选择更好的技术可以直接提高未来的生产力，但也增加了必须花费资源来提升人力资本以跟上发展步伐的风险。 如果增长带来风险，那么我们似乎应该观察到增长率与其波动性之间的正相关关系。 然而，数据显示，随着时间的推移，两者之间呈负相关。 该项目开发了一个模型来解释这一点，因为更高的波动性会导致未来技术和技能之间更大的不匹配以及更大的重组成本。 该模型可以去中心化和扩展，使其适合战后美国和其他地方数据中观察到的产出、消费、投资、股票价格和利率的增长率分布。 商业周期在一定程度上是技术选择的结果。 本项目研究在技术利用和人力资本调整中政策影响如何取决于外部效应。