CAREER: Firms and the Macroeconomy

世界经济中的生产活动不是在真空中发生的。大多数发生在公司的背景下。该项目旨在将对公司业务和财务合同的详细经验分析与更高级别的宏观经济调查结合起来。美国经济最近的发展提出了许多有趣的问题，需要这样的整合。第一个例子是，经济活动越来越依赖非有形资产(如知识产权、软件)，而不是传统的有形资产(如厂房和机械)。这一发展对企业的生产决策和融资结构有何影响？这种发展可能会对宏观经济结果产生怎样的影响？第二个例子是，经济活动在美国经济中的集中度一直在上升(即，大公司在经济产出和生产资产中所占的份额越来越大)。大公司崛起的背后是什么，集中度上升的影响是什么？为了更好地了解公司在实践中的活动，该项目将收集原始的微观数据，并结合不同领域的知识(例如，公司财务、法律、合同)。然后，它将利用此类调查的洞察力来研究宏观影响，并可能阐明经济政策的影响。从本研究的主要来源收集的数据将被公开共享，本项目的研究活动也希望促进不同领域的研究人员之间的交流。研究问题将包括两组主题。第一组问题将集中在公司的融资活动，特别是他们的借款能力。特别是，传统的贷款账户是公司质押实物资产，债权人可以在违约时扣押这些资产以强制偿还。然而，随着法律制度和资本市场的发展，美国公司债务的一种主要形式是基于公司运营的现金流(不一定是实物资产)。这种现代形式的公司债务对不同类型公司的信贷可获得性、对公司和经济的增长、对总生产率和资源分配以及对经济波动的影响是什么？第二组问题将研究公司的资产和运营(例如，无形资产的经济影响)，以及公司活动的长期演变，以正确看待当今世界。它还将阐明公司的情况(例如，为什么一些公司很大，而另一些公司很小)，以及在经济中发挥关键作用的最大公司的形成和演变。总而言之，该项目的研究有两个主要目标：1)发现关于公司经济活动的关键经验事实，2)利用这些事实为经济机制和理论框架提供信息。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Production activities in the world economy do not happen in a vacuum. A majority take place in the context of firms. This project aims to integrate detailed empirical analyses of firms’ operations and financial contracts with higher-level macroeconomic inquiries. Recent developments in the US economy raise many intriguing questions that require such an integration. As a first example, economic activities increasingly rely on nonphysical assets (e.g., intellectual property, software) rather than traditional physical assets (e.g., plants and machinery). What are the implications of this development for firms’ production decisions and financing structure? How might this development affect macroeconomic outcomes? As a second example, the concentration of economic activities in the US economy has been rising (i.e., large firms account for a growing share of the output and production assets in the economy). What underlies the rise of large firms and what are the implications of rising concentration? To better understand firms’ activities in practice, this project will collect original micro data and combine knowledge from different fields (e.g., corporate finance, law, contracts). It will then use the insights from such investigation to study macro implications and potentially shed light on the effects of economic policies. Data collected from primary sources in this research will be shared publicly, and research activities in this project also hope to facilitate communications among researchers in different fields. The research questions will cover two sets of topics. The first set of questions will focus on firms’ financing activities, especially their ability to borrow. In particular, the traditional account of lending is that firms pledge physical assets, which creditors can seize in default to enforce repayment. However, with the development of legal systems and capital markets, a primary form of corporate debt in the US is based on the cash flows from firms’ operations (not necessarily physical assets). What are the implications of this modern form of corporate debt for the availability of credit for different types of firms, for the growth of firms and the economy, for aggregate productivity and resource allocation, and for economic fluctuations? The second set of questions will study firms’ assets and operations (e.g., the economic effects of intangible assets), as well as the long-run evolution of firms’ activities to put today’s world into perspective. It will also shed light on the landscape of firms (e.g., why some firms are large while others are small), and the formation and evolution of the largest firms that play a key role in the economy. Taken together, the research in this project has two main objectives: 1) uncover key empirical facts about firms’ economic activities, and 2) utilize these facts to inform economic mechanisms and theoretical frameworks.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.