Studies in Distribution Theory

递归方法现在被广泛用于宏观经济学和资本理论，因为它们允许研究人员严格地推导出对经济动态的有用见解，在某些情况下甚至是深刻的见解。大多数这样的应用在很大程度上依赖于这样一个假设，即所有代理都可以由相同的代表代理代表。代表性代理人假设排除了使用这些模型来研究涉及分配、私人信息或两者兼而有之的问题。本项目开发了一种新的递归方法，用于在一类有趣的异类代理模型中构建有效的分配。这些模型将扩展到综合不确定性和分散规划。这个项目发展了市场经济中收入分配动态的理论。它的核心技术思想是一个新的贝尔曼方程，用于构建和表征具有不同家庭和私人信息的经济体的有效配置。这个方程被用来研究收入分配、资产定价和最优税收。

Recursive methods are now in wide use in macroeconomics and capital theory because they permit researchers to rigorously derive useful and in some cases profound insights into economic dynamics. Most such applications depend critically on the assumption that all agents can be represented by the same representative agent. The representative agent assumption precludes the use of these models to study issues involving distribution, private information or both. The present project develops a new, recursive method for constructing efficient allocations in an interesting class of heterogeneous agent models. The models will be extended to aggregate uncertainty and to decentralized planning. This project develops a theory of the dynamics of the income distribution in a market economy. Its central technical idea is a new Bellman equation for constructing and characterizing efficient allocations in economies with differently situated households and private information. This equation is used to study income distribution, asset pricing and optimal taxation.