Collaborative Research: Macroeconomic Implications of Economic Policy in Imperfectly Competitive Labor Markets

合作研究：不完全竞争的劳动力市场中经济政策的宏观经济影响

• 批准号: 2214460
• 负责人: David Berger
• 金额: $ 18.69万
• 依托单位: Duke University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2022
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2022-08-15 至 2025-07-31
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2214460&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Collaborative; Research; Macroeconomic; Implications; Economic

This project measures the macroeconomic consequences of imperfectly competitive labor markets. In his 2022 AEA Presidential Address, David Card argued that imperfect competition in the labor market is pervasive. Few firms dominate many local labor markets giving them the ability to set wages and pay workers less than their marginal product. Workers are often reluctant to search for a new job, further reenforcing firms' market power. What types of policies can improve outcomes in the labor market and what are their macroeconomic effects? This project consists of a research agenda focused on this question. This project builds on a tested quantitative framework for imperfect competition in labor markets and then extends this framework to (i) account for empirical evidence from applied microeconomic studies and our own empirical contributions and then (ii) analyze policy. The frameworks developed in this project will generate several public goods. First, the frameworks allow economists, legal scholars, and policymakers to better inform minimum wage policy, merger guidelines, and optimal taxation. Second, as part of this project's ongoing efforts to study the distributional consequences of mergers, this project will develop a new set of Census database linkages between the Decennial Census, the LEHD, and the LBD in order to study the effects of mergers across race, gender, occupation and other policy-relevant characteristics of workers. The codes for the models developed in this project will be available online, and the Census maintains a repository of our empirical analysis for all future researchers. Lastly, the models developed in this project provide a set of theoretic and computational tools that enable researchers to solve models of oligopsony quickly and efficiently.Our agenda builds on our tested quantitative framework for imperfect competition in labor markets. We propose four sub-projects that apply and extend oligopsony models featuring rich worker and firm heterogeneity to: (i) understand the capacity of minimum wage policy to retrieve a portion of the efficiency losses due to wage setting power in the labor market, (ii) study the trade-offs for antitrust policy in terms of productivity improvements in output versus efficiency losses due to greater monopsony power, (iii) describe and analyze a novel link between the design of income tax policy and labor market efficiency while laying out a complete framework for analysis of distributional consequences of monopsony, (iv) revisit all three policies within a framework that allows for market power due to both `classical' monopsony via preference heterogeneity, and `frictional' monopsony due to search in a job ladder setting. In each case we either (i) provide new empirical facts to test our new theory, or (ii) hold the new theory accountable to the most up-to-date empirical evidence from the applied microeconomics literature, building a bridge between quantitative and empirical work.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.

这个项目衡量了不完全竞争的劳动力市场的宏观经济后果。在他的2022年AEA总裁演讲中，大卫·卡德认为劳动力市场上的不完全竞争无处不在。几乎没有几家公司主宰了许多当地劳动力市场，这让它们有能力制定工资，支付给工人的工资低于他们的边际产出。工人们往往不愿寻找新的工作，这进一步加强了公司的市场力量。哪些类型的政策可以改善劳动力市场的结果，它们的宏观经济影响是什么？这个项目包括一个集中在这个问题上的研究议程。这个项目建立了一个劳动力市场不完全竞争的检验量化框架，然后将该框架扩展到(I)解释来自应用微观经济学研究的经验证据和我们自己的经验贡献，然后(Ii)分析政策。在这个项目中开发的框架将产生几个公共产品。首先，这些框架允许经济学家、法律学者和政策制定者更好地为最低工资政策、合并指导方针和最优税收提供信息。第二，作为该项目正在进行的研究合并分配后果的努力的一部分，该项目将开发一套新的人口普查数据库链接，在十年一次的人口普查、Lehd和LBD之间建立联系，以便研究合并对种族、性别、职业和其他与工人的政策相关特征的影响。在这个项目中开发的模型的代码将在网上获得，人口普查局为所有未来的研究人员保留了我们的经验分析储存库。最后，这个项目中开发的模型提供了一套理论和计算工具，使研究人员能够快速高效地求解寡头垄断模型。我们的议程建立在我们针对劳动力市场不完全竞争的测试量化框架之上。我们提出了四个子项目，它们应用和扩展了具有富有工人和企业异质性的寡头模型：(I)了解最低工资政策弥补劳动力市场工资制定权造成的部分效率损失的能力；(Ii)研究反垄断政策在提高产出生产率和提高垄断权力造成的效率损失方面的权衡；(Iii)描述和分析所得税政策设计和劳动力市场效率之间的新联系，同时为分析垄断的分配后果提供一个完整的框架，(4)在允许市场力量的框架内重新审查所有这三项政策，这既是由于偏好异质性造成的“经典”垄断，也是由于在工作阶梯设置中寻找而产生的“摩擦性”垄断。在每个案例中，我们要么(I)提供新的经验事实来测试我们的新理论，要么(Ii)使新理论对应用微观经济学文献中的最新经验证据负责，在定量和实证工作之间架起一座桥梁。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。