Collaborative Research on Applied Equilibrium with Increasing Returns: A Non Parametric Approach

应用一般均衡模型正在成为分析家庭、企业、政府政策和国际经济之间相互关系的主要方法。目前，在计算平衡值之前，有两种主要的方法来指定一般均衡模型。这些是计量经济学规范和校准。这两种方法都有一定的缺点，特别是在实际应用中存在测量误差的情况下。本项目中所做的工作将通过使用非参数方法来指定一般均衡模型来克服这些困难。该项目避免了与计量经济学和校准方法相关的困难，不对误差的形式、分布或精确值做出任何假设。相反，为了测试一组给定的数据是否可能是在通常的行为假设下行动的市场参与者产生的，我们推导了一组必要条件。也就是说，企业最大化利润，消费者最大化效用。推导了效用函数的存在性检验，并将其应用于经验数据。这个项目是与斯坦福大学的唐纳德·布朗教授合作完成的。在过去的几十年里，已经发展了各种方法来分析整个经济。投入产出分析、线性规划和活动分析一直是对经济中的所有相互关系(企业、消费者和政府)进行建模，并估计经济将达到均衡的价值的支柱。这些方法越来越多地让位于一种更基本的方法，这种方法积极地纳入了作为单个市场参与者活动基础的行为假设。也就是说，假设消费者根据具有已知属性的数学函数的参数规范最大化效用。同样，企业被假定为根据一个数学函数实现利润最大化。这种参数方法的困难在于，必须对经验数据中出现的误差的值或分布做出非常强有力的假设。这个项目克服了这一困难，通过推导出一组必要条件，应用于一组观察到的经验数据，以测试这些数据是否可能是由具有假设行为特性的模型生成的。因此，这种非参数方法避免了对市场参与者行为进行参数说明的假设。这些非参数检验为进一步的参数分析提供了基本的理论基础。这个项目是与斯坦福大学的唐纳德·布朗教授合作完成的。

Applied general equilibrium models are becoming the primary method for analyzing the interrelations among households, firms, governmental policy, and the international economy. At present there exist two main methods of specifying general equilibrium models before equilibrium values are computed. These are econometric specification and calibration. Both methods have certain shortcomings, particularly in empirical application where there are errors in measurement. The work done in this project will overcome those difficulties by using a non-parametric approach in specifying the general equilibrium model. This project avoids the difficulties associated with the econometric and calibration methods by making no assumptions about the form, either distributional or exact value, of the errors. Rather, a set of necessary conditions is derived for testing whether a given set of data could have been generated by market participants acting under the usual behavioral assumptions. That is, the firms maximize profit, and the consumers maximize utility. Tests for the existence of utility functions are derived, and applied to the empirical data. This project is done in collaboration with Professor Donald Brown of Stanford University. %%% During the past several decades various methods for analyzing the economy in its entirety have been developed. Input-output analysis, linear programming, and activity analysis have been the mainstays for modeling all the interrelationships (firms, consumers, and government) in an economy, and estimating values at which the economy will reach equilibrium. These methods have increasingly given way to a more fundamental methodology which actively incorporates the behavioral assumptions underlying the activities of the individual market participants. That is, the consumers are assumed to maximize utility according to a parametric specification of a mathematical function with known properties. Likewise, firms are assumed to maximize profit according to a mathematical function. The difficulty with this parametric approach is that very strong assumptions must be made about the values or distribution of errors occuring in empirical data. This project overcomes that difficulty by deriving a set of necessary conditions to be applied to a set of observed empirical data to test whether those data could have been generated by a model with the assumed behavioral properties. Therefore, this non-parametric approach avoids the maintained hypothesis of parametric specification for the behavior of the market participants. These non-parametric tests provide a fundamental theoretical basis for further parametric analysis. This project is done in collaboration with Professor Donald Brown of Stanford University.