SGER: Durable Goods, Borrowing Constraints and the Business Cycle

这项用于探索性研究的小额赠款支持一项定量研究，即家庭借贷限制如何与商业周期中的总活动相互作用。特别是，它探讨了基本面(技术、财富分配或财政政策等)的冲击如何通过它们对借款限制的反馈，产生巨大而持续的波动。该项目还评估了信贷市场结构的外生变化对商业周期数量特性的影响。关键的新元素将是耐用品的存在。这些商品将扮演双重角色，既提供直接效用，又为拥有这些商品的家庭提供附带服务。这第二个作用将引发一种新的、强大的从冲击到基本面的传导机制。耐用品在本研究项目中的重要性是因为耐用品对产出和财富的参与度很高。该项目将帮助回答这样的问题：借款限制对总活动有什么影响？而影响这些制约因素的政策变化又会产生什么影响？这个项目是一个广泛的尝试的一部分，目的是明确地将个人异质性纳入宏观经济学，以研究个人行为和宏观经济总量之间的相互作用如何随着经济政策的变化而变化。

This Small Grant for Exploratory Research supports a quantitative study of how households borrowing constraints interact with aggregate activity over the business cycle. In particular it explores how shocks to fundamentals (technology, wealth distribution or fiscal policy among others) might generate large and persistent fluctuations through their feedback with borrowing constraints. The project also evaluates the effects of exogenous changes in the credit markets structure on the quantitative properties of the business cycle. The key new element will be the presence of durables goods. These goods will play a dual role, both delivering direct utility and providing collateral services to the households that own them. This second role will induce a new and powerful transmission mechanism from shocks to fundamentals. The importance of durable goods in this research project is motivated by their high participation in output and wealth. The project will help answer questions like what are the effects of borrowing constraints on aggregate activity? And what are the effects of policy changes that affect these constraints? This project is part of a broad attempt to explicitly incorporate individual heterogeneity into macroeconomics, in order to study how the interaction between individual behavior and macroeconomic aggregates moves in response to changes in economic policy.