Stabilizing Macroeconomic Shocks: Experiments on the Interaction between Central Bank and Private Sector

宏观经济学家经常假设通货膨胀和就业的波动与社会成本有关。中央银行可以使用货币政策来控制一个国家的通货膨胀率和就业率的波动。然而，在一个受供应冲击影响的经济体中，央行面临着稳定通胀和就业之间的权衡。另一方面，私营部门理论上可以通过适当调整工资和价格来吸收供应冲击。私营部门对供应冲击的反应应该更有效，因为它们可以解决不对称冲击，减轻中央银行稳定就业的负担，从而实现有效的通货膨胀稳定。但是，价格和工资调整与协调问题有关，因为不同部门的价格是战略互补的，对外部冲击的最佳反应取决于其他私人代理人的反应。中央银行有能力通过利率影响产品需求来解决协调问题。 然而，货币政策只能应对总体冲击，可能会排挤私人部门的反应，而私人部门的反应是在不对称冲击后趋同于均衡所必需的。因此，我们确定了两个相互作用的来源： 中央银行的稳定政策与私营部门的反应之间的战略替代：中央银行与私营部门之间存在冲突，因为主动稳定的代价是昂贵的，尽管双方都从稳定就业中受益。- 私人部门行为者之间的战略互补性：一个部门因宏观经济冲击而进行的工资或价格调整，会提高其他经济部门调整工资或价格的动机。在本研究项目中，我们将使用实验室实验来生成遵循现代宏观模型的博弈数据。这种方法的优点是，我们可以在其他方面平等的待遇中实施不同的政策制度，从而隔离透明度、廉价谈话和对规则的承诺的影响。我们的具体研究问题是，哪种政策制度最适合解决中央银行和分散的私营部门之间的利益冲突，以稳定就业和最大限度地减少外部冲击的福利成本。

Macroeconomists often assume that fluctuations of inflation and employment are associated with social costs. A central bank can use monetary policy to contain fluctuations in a country's inflation and employment rates. In an economy affected by supply shocks, however, the central bank faces a tradeoff between stabilizing inflation and employment. The private sector, on the other hand, can theoretically absorb supply shocks by proper adjustments of wages and prices. Private responses to supply shocks should be more efficient, because they can address asymmetric shocks and relieve the central bank from stabilizing employment, so that it can achieve an efficient stabilization of inflation. But, price and wage adjustments are associated with a coordination problem, because prices in different sectors are strategic complements and the optimal response to an exogenous shock depends on the responses of other private agents. Central banks have the ability of solving the coordination problem by affecting product demand via the interest rate. However, monetary policy can just address aggregate shocks and may crowd out private responses that are, however, necessary for convergence to equilibrium after asymmetric shocks. We, thus, identify two sources of interactions:- Strategic substitution between central bank's stabilization policy and private sector's reaction: there is a conflict between the central bank and the private sector, since active stabilization is costly, although both parties benefit from stabilizing employment. - Strategic complementarity between actions of private sector's agents: wage or price adjustments to macroeconomic shocks in one sector raise the incentives to adjust wages or prices in other sectors of the economy.In this research project, we will use laboratory experiments to generate data on a game that follows a modern macro model. The advantage of this approach is that we can implement different policy regimes in treatments that are otherwise equal and, thus, isolate the effects of transparency, cheap talk, and commitments to rules. Our specific research question is which policy regimes are best-suited to resolve the conflict of interests between central bank and a decentralized private sector in stabilizing employment and minimize the welfare costs of exogenous shocks.