Markets and Institutions: A Matching Approach

长期以来，经济学家一直关注市场和非市场机构在进行交易方面的权衡。本研究基于三个关键假设，明确分析了市场互动对特定代理人交易机构决策和绩效的影响，这是一项突破性的研究：(1)形成生产关系需要代理人在反映市场互动的匹配过程中与其他代理人相遇；(2)新匹配的代理人对其关系进行特定的投资，不能明确约定；(3)富有成效的关系会随着时间的推移而持续，需要持续的努力，而这种努力也是不可收缩的。关键的观点是，市场力量通过影响代理人提供持续努力的动机来塑造交易关系。本研究建立了一个数学一般均衡框架，包括：(1)多种组织形式下的双边投资和贸易模型；(2)反映不对称、搜索努力和新agent流入可能性的匹配模型；(3)资本市场模型，在该模型中，代理人获得特定投资所需的资源，并创造新的生产性资产。这开发了框架的初步版本，并报告了一系列新的分析结果，说明了该方法的力量。首先，市场力量可以抵消由投资不完全可收缩性引起的投资不足激励，第一最佳效率可以在积极的市场摩擦水平上出现。其次，减少市场摩擦会破坏现有贸易关系的稳定，从而对短期福利产生不利影响，而且这种减少也会使长期福利最小化。第三，市场力量影响代理人对一体化与非一体化组织形式的选择。该项目研究在生产关系质量不确定和（或）资料不完全的情况下的组织形式、配对、重新谈判和福利，以及对宏观经济问题的应用，包括经济增长、政策传播和名义上的僵化。

Ramey 9630270 Economists have long been concerned with the tradeoffs between market and nonmarket institutions with respect to carrying out transactions. The proposed research breaks new ground by explicitly analyzing the impact of market interaction on the determination and performance of agent-specific trading institutions, based on three key hypotheses: (1) forming productive relationships requires that agents meet with other agents in a matching process that reflects market interaction; (2) newly-matched agents make investments that are specific to their relationship and that cannot be contracted upon explicitly; and (3) productive relationships continue through time and require ongoing effort that is also not contractible. The key insight is that market forces shape trading relationships through their effect on the agents' incentives to provide ongoing effort. The research develops a mathematical general-equilibrium framework consisting of (1) models of bilateral investment and trading under a variety of organizational forms; (2) a matching model reflecting possibilities for asymmetries, search effort and inflow of new agents; and (3) a model of the capital market in which agents obtain resources needed for specific investment as well as creation of new productive assets. This develops a preliminary version of the framework, and reports a range of new analytical results illustrating the power of the approach. First, market forces can counteract the underinvestment incentive deriving from incomplete contractibility of investment, and first-best efficiency can emerge at a positive level of market friction. second, reducing market friction can have adverse short-run welfare effects by destabilizing existing trading relationships, and such reductions can also minimize long-run welfare. Third, market forces affect agents choice of integrated versus nonintegrated organizational forms. The project studies organizational form, matching, renegotiation and welfare in settings characteri zed by uncertainty and/or incomplete information regarding the quality of productive relationships, as well as applications to issues in macroeconomics, including economic growth, policy propagation and nominal rigidity.