A Theoretical and Quantitative Macroeconomic Analysis of Labor Market Trends: 1970-2000

这个项目的目的是阐明自20世纪70年代以来在美国观察到的一些重要劳动力市场趋势背后的经济力量。此外，该项目还旨在通过使用严格的理论和定量经济模型，更广泛地了解这些劳动力市场趋势对美国经济的影响。该项目由三个部分组成，它们有着共同的目标。 第一个分项目侧重于与工资分配演变有关的大趋势。例如，在过去30年中，总体工资不平等和教育回报大幅增加，这种情况今天仍在继续。这些趋势在未来几十年还会继续吗？与此同时，尽管工资不平等显著上升，但消费不平等的上升却相当平缓。这是否应该让我们感到安慰，这些发展不太可能产生重要的福利后果？为了能够回答这些问题，我们需要对这些现象的原因有一个正确的理解;我们需要一个模型。因此，第一个子项目将调查人力资本模型的相互作用-其中的关键异质性是在个人的学习能力-与技能偏向的技术变革（SBTC）可以解释观察到的工资分布的演变特征。所提出的模型是丰富的，但易于分析，这使我们能够从理论上发展其影响。我们还打算提供一个全面的定量评估模型的能力，以解释自20世纪70年代以来的工资分配的演变。 第二个子项目将从个人的经济选择（如消费选择）中获取有关劳动收入风险性质的信息，其中包含有关个人所面临的环境的有价值信息，包括他们所感知的未来（收入）风险。消费-储蓄决策将在一个丰富的生命周期框架中建模，放松了早期研究中的几个重要假设。这些假设的目的是使GMM（广义矩量法）的方法可行。相反，该项目将使用过去十年开发的强大的间接推理新工具，该工具在估计具有丰富现实特征的经济模型方面提供了显着的灵活性。这一工作在计算方面提出了若干挑战，该分项目的部分贡献将是开发先进工具，使间接推断在复杂的宏观经济模型中可行，从而产生更广泛的影响。 第三个子项目旨在了解深刻改变妇女在劳动力市场中作用的几项发展（一些经济学家称之为“静悄悄的革命”）。从本质上讲，已婚妇女的劳动力参与率从1960年的33%上升到1990年的近70%。在妇女的教育程度和职业选择方面也观察到类似的趋势（这变得更加面向职业）。这些趋势共同导致了“双职工夫妇”的出现。因此，这个子项目研究双职工夫妇的出现对劳动力市场均衡的影响。该项目旨在了解劳动力市场的结果如何在单职业和双职业夫妇之间变化，以及双职业夫妇的增加如何影响劳动力市场的总体行为。

The purpose of this project is to shed light on the economic forces behind some significant labor market trends observed in the United States since the 1970's. In addition, the project also aims to understand the consequences of these labor market trends for the U.S. economy more broadly, by using rigorous theoretical and quantitative economic modeling. The project is composed of three components, which share this common goal. The first subproject focuses on the broad trends related to the evolution of the wage distribution. For example, in the past 30 years there have been substantial increases in overall wage inequality as well as in the returns to education, which still continue today. Will these trends continue in the coming decades? At the same time, despite the significant rise in wage inequality, the rise in consumption inequality has been rather muted. Should this give us comfort that these developments are not likely to have important welfare consequences? To be able to answer questions like these we need a sound understanding of the causes of these phenomena; we need a model. Therefore the first subproject will investigate whether the interaction of a human capital model---where the key heterogeneity is in individuals' learning ability---with skill-biased technical change (SBTC) can explain the observed features of the evolution of the wage distribution. The proposed model is rich, yet analytically tractable, which allows us to develop its implications theoretically. We also intend to provide a comprehensive quantitative assessment of the model's ability to explain the evolution of the wage distribution since the 1970's. The second subproject will elicit information about the nature of labor income risk from individuals' economic choices (such as consumption choice), which contain valuable information about the environment faced by individuals, including the future (income) risks they perceive. Consumption-savings decision will be modeled in a rich life-cycle framework, relaxing several important assumptions made in earlier studies. These assumptions were designed to make the GMM (Generalized Method of Moments) approach feasible. Instead, this project will use the powerful new tools of Indirect Inference developed in the last decade, which provides significant flexibility in estimating economic models with a rich set of realistic features. This exercise poses several computational challenges, and part of the contribution of this subproject will be to develop advanced tools to make indirect inference feasible in complex macroeconomic models, thereby having a broader impact. The third subproject aims to understand several developments that have profoundly changed women's role in the labor market (what some economists have called the "quiet revolution"). Essentially, the labor force participation rate of married women increased from 33 percent in 1960 to almost 70 percent in 1990. Similar trends have been observed in the educational attainment and occupational choices of women (which have become more career-oriented). These trends have jointly given rise to the emergence of "dual-career couples." This subproject therefore studies the ramifications of the emergence of dual-career couples for the labor market equilibrium. The project aims to understand how the labor market outcomes vary across single- and dual-career couples, as well as how the rise in dual-career couples affects the aggregate behavior of the labor market.