Topics in the Study of Fluctuations: Business Cycles and Household Formation and Corner Solutions in New Keynesian Models

波动研究主题：新凯恩斯主义模型中的经济周期和家庭形成及角点解决方案

• 批准号: 1156228
• 负责人: Jose-Victor Rios-Rull
• 金额: $ 25.82万
• 依托单位: University of Minnesota-Twin Cities
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2012
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2012-03-15 至 2016-02-29
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1156228&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Topics; Study; Fluctuations; Business; Cycles

AbstractOver time, as people get richer, household size declines: young people move out of their family house earlier, young couples do not live with their parents, older people do not move back with their children, people spend a bigger fraction of their time as singles. A related little known feature is that similar behavior occurs during business cycles: in recessions people tend to live in larger households, while the opposite happens in expansions. This is mostly due to young people in distress moving in with their parents, although there are other margins at work: divorces get delayed, people move in with their siblings or friends. Studies of the business cycles have ignored this margin, and the plan of the first part of the project is to close this gap. Movements in household size over the cycle are important for various reasons. Taking into account that people can move in with others gives a more accurate picture of how willing they are to change the hours that they work over expansions and recessions, and it also gives a very different picture of how good people are at bearing the consequences of economic adversity. So it has potential implicationsboth for the performance of the economy in the aggregate, and for the study of how the effects of business cycles trickle down in the lives of people.The project involves posing artificial economies populated by stable people, those that are older and married, and by not-so-stable people, the young, the unmarried. In these artificial economies, the not-so-stable people have the option of moving in with stable people in certain circumstances that are more prevalent during recessions. The project will then compare the performance of these artificial economies where household size is moving with standard models of the business cycle that ignore this margin and it will measure the adjustments that the latter would need in order to have the main properties of economies with movements in household size. To carry out this type of exercise, there is a need to carefully measure the willingness and ability of people to move in with others. The artificial economies that will be built will have to share with the data the behavior of household composition over the business cycle. Further down the road, the insights provided by the project will be used to construct artificial economies populated by individual agents that form and destroy households (they move out of their parents, get married and divorce, have children who in turn move out) in ways that are similar to those in the U.S., but that are affected by current economic conditions. This feature will be useful as it complements standard artificial economies in the literature where people and households are taken to be either one and the same, or unchanged over time.The project has another part more technical that has to do with the solution methods of some models. The existing methods to solve these models are based on assumptions that certain global considerations are not relevant and use what are called local techniques. Unfortunately, whether these global conditions are satisfied or not are not checked. This part of the project builds global methods that take into account those global considerations. An example of this issue is the following: firms sometimes cannot change the wages of their employees, and they face oscillating demand. What standard methods assume is that these demand oscillations are small and they are accommodated by changing the number of workers hired. It is possible, however that when demand increases are large, there are just not enough workers willing to be hired at those fixed wages (this is the global condition that is assumed not to be violated). Current methods proceed as if there are always available workers, and there are sound reasons to do so when demand increases are small enough. However, sometimes the demand increases are large. The project plans to use methods that accommodate the possibility that workers cannot be found.

抽象的时间，随着人们变得越来越丰富，家庭规模下降：年轻人早些时候搬出家庭房子，年轻的夫妇不与父母同住，老年人不会与孩子一起回去，人们花了很大一部分时间作为单身人士。一个相关的鲜为人知的特征是，在商业周期期间发生了类似的行为：在衰退中，人们倾向于生活在较大的家庭中，而相反的扩张发生在扩展中。这主要是由于年轻人与父母一起搬家，尽管还有其他工作余地：离婚延迟，人们与兄弟姐妹或朋友一起搬进来。对业务周期的研究忽略了这一余地，该项目的第一部分的计划是缩小这一差距。由于各种原因，在周期内，家庭规模的运动很重要。考虑到人们可以与他人一起搬进来，可以更准确地了解他们如何改变他们在扩张和衰退上工作的时间，这也给人以截然不同的情况，说明了人们如何承受经济逆境的后果。因此，它对经济在总体中的表现以及对商业周期的影响如何在人们的生活中滴下来具有潜在影响。在这些人造经济体中，不太稳定的人可以选择在某些情况下与稳定的人一起搬家，这些情况在衰退期间更为普遍。然后，该项目将比较这些人造经济体的绩效，在这些经济体的绩效中，家庭规模正在移动的标准型号，这些型号忽略了这个余量，它将衡量后者需要的调整，以使经济体的主要特性具有家庭规模的运动。为了进行这种类型的锻炼，有必要仔细衡量人们与他人一起搬家的意愿和能力。将要建立的人工经济必须与数据共享在整个商业周期中家庭组成的行为。在路上，该项目提供的见解将用于建造由各个代理人组成的人造经济体，这些经济体是形成和摧毁家庭（他们搬出父母，结婚和离婚，育有孩子搬出的孩子）的人造经济，但与美国的孩子相似，但受到当前经济状况的影响。此功能将很有用，因为它补充了文献中的标准人工经济，在文献中，人们和家庭被认为是一个或相同的，或者随着时间的推移不变。该项目具有与某些模型的解决方案方法有关的另一部分。解决这些模型的现有方法是基于某些全局考虑不相关并使用所谓的本地技术的假设。不幸的是，未检查这些全球条件是否满足。该项目的这一部分构建了考虑这些全球考虑的全球方法。这个问题的一个例子是：公司有时无法改变员工的工资，他们面临振荡的需求。哪种标准方法假设这些需求振荡很小，并且通过更改雇用的工人人数来容纳它们。但是，有可能的是，当需求增加很大时，就没有足够的工人愿意在这些固定工资上雇用（这是假定不违反的全球条件）。当前的方法像总是有可用的工人一样进行的，当需求增加足够小时，有明显的理由这样做。但是，有时需求增加很大。该项目计划使用可容纳无法找到工人的可能性的方法。