CAREER: Integrating Micro and Macro Evidence on Price Dynamics

知识价值：由于价格调整的性质在决定货币和财政政策如何影响经济方面起着至关重要的作用，一部长期存在的宏观经济学文献一直专注于试图记录价格动态的性质。近年来，随着价格数据的日益增多，这方面的文献取得了重大进展。这类数据的一个重要新来源是美国劳工统计局(BLS)收集的价格研究数据库，用于构建CPI和PPI等价格指数。PI是第一批使用这些数据集的学术研究人员之一，几年来一直参与开发和分析这些数据。在这份职业提案中，PI提出了几个研究与价格动态相关的问题的项目。该提案的一个主要组成部分涉及创建新的变量，使数据能够以新的方式使用。PI建议在单个品牌/型号或UPC代码级别创建标准化的产品识别符，可用于连接CPI和PPI研究数据库。PPI还建议在PPI研究数据库中建立上游和下游生产者之间的新联系，以及新的产品特征变量。这一新的关联数据集将使人们能够跟踪上游成本最初变化产生的整个价格反应链，通过下游制造商随后的价格调整，直到最终零售价格的任何最终变化，从而能够对公司如何对成本变动做出广泛的分析。它还将允许对与价格动态相关的其他问题进行新的分析，包括战略定价互动、价格分散和享乐需求模型。独特的产品标识还将使PPI能够将劳工统计局的国内价格数据与相应的国际价格数据联系起来，从而有可能对离岸业务如何影响美国经济做出更好的估计。构建美国投入成本衡量标准的一个重要挑战是，如果一家美国公司从国内供应商转向外国供应商，那么在转换时发生的价格变化将不会记录在劳工统计局数据中(本质上，当产品从PPI转换到IPP数据库时，它将被丢弃)。其结果是，美国企业成本的相关下降-投入可能只是在运输过程中丢失-导致对美国制造业企业附加值的错误估计。最近的证据表明，这一衡量问题可能会导致对美国近期生产率增长的大幅高估。新的关联数据库将使我能够对外包如何影响美国经济做出新的估计，以应对这一衡量挑战。最后，PI提出了四个相关项目，旨在使用其他数据来源分析名义刚性。第一个项目的重点是研究价格对潜在成本变动的反应，使用包括生产多个阶段的价格在内的确定数据，以及潜在生产成本的衡量标准。第二个项目建议研究消费者的购物行为在商业周期中如何变化。第三个项目建议使用一家大型薪资公司的数据来研究工资刚性。第四个项目研究新客户和老客户的信贷合同条款如何适应巨大的宏观经济冲击，例如最近的金融危机，以及这一证据对理解金融部门与实体经济之间联系的影响。广泛影响：拟议中的研究与美联储和财政部等政策制定者相关，这些政策制定者采用了货币和财政政策的宏观经济模型，价格调整在其中发挥核心作用。外包对美国经济的影响，以及最近生产率增长的来源，也具有重要的政策含义，商业媒体最近的高调文章都强调了这一点。最后，该项目涉及创建一个新的关联数据集，该数据集将通过劳工统计局外部研究人员计划向学术界提供。国际文学联合会早期对这一主题的研究已发表在顶级学术期刊上，预计她将继续以这种方式传播她的工作。她的工作还通过《经济学人》和《商业周刊》等主要新闻媒体的文章向更广泛的公众传播。

Intellectual Merit:Since the nature of price adjustment plays a crucial role in determining how monetary and fiscal policies affect the economy, a longstanding literature in macroeconomics has focused on trying to document the nature of price dynamics. In recent years, major advances in this literature have arisen from the growing availability of data on prices. One important new source of such data is the research database of prices collected by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) to construct price indexes such as the CPI and PPI. The PI was among the first academic researchers to use these datasets and have for several years been involved in developing and analyzing these data. In this Career Proposal, the PI proposes several projects to study issues related to price dynamics. A major component of the proposal involves the creation of new variables that will allow the data to be used in new ways. The PI proposes the creation of standardized product identifiers at the level of individual brands/model numbers or UPC codes that can be used to link the CPI and PPI research databases. The PI also proposes the creation of new links within the PPI research database between upstream and downstream producers, as well as new product characteristic variables. This new linked dataset will make it possible to follow the full chain of price responses resulting from an initial change in upstream costs, through subsequent price adjustments by downstream manufacturers, to any eventual changes in the final retail price, allowing for a broad-based analysis of how firms respond to movements in costs. It will also allow for new analyses of other issues related to price dynamics, including strategic pricing interactions, price dispersion, and hedonic demand models. The unique product identifiers will also allow the PI to link the BLS data on domestic prices with the corresponding data on international prices, making it possible to develop improved estimates of how off-shoring affects the US economy. An important challenge in constructing measures of US input costs is that if a US firm switches from purchasing its inputs from a domestic to a foreign supplier, the price change that occurs at the time of the switch will not be recorded in the BLS data (essentially, it is dropped as the product transitions from the PPI to the IPP database). As a consequence, associated declines in the cost of US firms-inputs may simply be lost in transit-yielding incorrect estimates of the value-added of US manufacturing firms. Recent evidence suggests that this measurement problem may lead to a substantial overestimation of recent US productivity growth. The new linked database will allow me to develop new estimates of how outsourcing affects the US economy that address this measurement challenge. Finally, the PI proposes four related projects aimed at analyzing nominal rigidities using other sources of data. The first project focuses on studying how prices react to underlying movements in costs using firm data that include prices at multiple stages of production, and a measure of underlying production costs. The second project proposes to study how consumer shopping behavior varies over the business cycle. The third project proposes to study wage rigidity using data from a large payroll firm. The fourth project studies how the terms of credit contracts for new vs. continuing customers adjust to large macroeconomic shocks, such as the recent financial crisis, and the implications of this evidence for understanding the linkages between the financial sector and the real economy.Broader Impact: The proposed research is relevant to policymakers such as the US Federal Reserve and Treasury, who employ macroeconomic models of monetary and fiscal policy in which price adjustment plays a central role. The effects of outsourcing on the US economy, and the sources of recent productivity growth, also have important policy implications that have been emphasized in recent high profile articles in the business press. Finally, this project involves creating a new linked dataset that will be made available to the academic community through the BLS outside researcher program. The PI's earlier research on this topic has been published in top academic journals, and it is to be expected that she will continue to disseminate her work in this way. Her work has also been disseminated to the broader public through articles in major news outlets such as The Economist and BusinessWeek.