The Intergenerational Redistribution of Wealth and Welfare in Great Recessions

美国国家科学基金会建议1123547：奖项摘要：《大衰退中财富和福利的代际再分配》，作者：德克·克鲁格2007年下半年开始并持续至今的经济衰退是自1930年代大萧条以来最严重的经济衰退？S。最近的一篇大型文献探讨了这场所谓的大衰退的原因和综合后果。相反，该项目研究了总经济活动严重下降造成的财富和经济福利损失是如何在人口中不同年龄段之间分配的。关注年龄维度的动机是来自家庭一级数据的经验观察，即劳动收入和净值(所有资产的净值减去所有债务)在整个生命周期中表现出不同的特征。资产主要集中在年长的家庭中，而年轻家庭的净资产很少，但可以预期未来会有可观的劳动收入。由于股票和房屋等资产价格在大衰退期间的跌幅约为劳动力收入的三倍，本项目评估的主要假设是，最近经济危机造成的财富和福利损失在不同年龄段的家庭中分布非常不均匀，并集中在老年人中。为了定量研究这一假设，本项目开发了一个具有总风险、内生的家庭劳动休闲和投资组合选择以及政府税收、债务和社会保障政策的大规模重叠世代(OLG)模型，并将其校准为危机前生命周期劳动收入和2007年消费者金融调查(SCF)数据中观察到的资产概况。然后，它在模型中生成2007至2009年间观察到的总经济活动下降幅度，并首先分析该模型是否能像数据中观察到的那样，导致资产价格下降三倍于产出。然后，该项目使用该模型来衡量大衰退造成的福利损失如何在不同年龄段的人群中分配，包括子孙后代。最后，它使用开发的模型来研究对大衰退的财政政策反应(例如，政府通过问题资产救助计划(TARP)直接和间接购买资产)如何塑造经济低迷所隐含的福利损失的年龄分布，以及为这些政策的成本融资的替代战略(税收融资与债务融资)将如何影响这种分配。该项目预期产生的更广泛影响(至少)是双重的。首先，也是最直接的，开发的模型、校准和求解模型的数值算法将公开可用，因此任何有兴趣研究其他重大经济冲击(如人口冲击或全国范围内的自然灾害)在不同世代之间的再分配后果的研究人员都可以应用。其次，对针对大衰退的实际和假想财政政策反应的分析得出的结果，不仅有助于了解这些政策在当前经济低迷时期的可取性，还可以为未来可能为应对大规模经济危机而实施的根本性财政政策改革(包括社会保障和医疗保险改革)的再分配后果的研究和公共政策讨论提供指导。

NSF Proposal 1123547: Draft Award Abstract"The Intergenerational Redistribution of Wealth and Welfare in Great Recessions"By Dirk KruegerThe economic downturn that started in the second half of 2007 and continues today is the most severe recession since the great depression of the 1930?s. A recent large literature investigates the causes and aggregate consequences of this so-called great recession. This project in contrast studies how the wealth and economic welfare losses from this severe decline in aggregate economic activity are distributed across different age cohorts in the population. The focus on the age dimension is motivated by the empirical observation from household level data that labor earnings and net worth (the value of all assets net of all debts) display a distinct profile over the life cycle. Asset holdings are strongly concentrated among older households whereas younger households possess very little net worth, but can expect substantial future labor income. Since the price of assets such as stocks and houses declined by about three times as much as labor incomes in the great recession, the main hypothesis evaluated in this project is that the wealth and welfare losses from the recent economic crisis are very unevenly distributed across households of different ages, and are concentrated among the elderly.In order to quantitatively investigate this hypothesis this project develops a large scale overlapping generations (OLG) model with aggregate risk, an endogenous household labor-leisure and portfolio choice as well as government tax, debt and social security policies, and calibrates it to pre-crisis life cycle labor income and asset profiles observed in 2007 Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF) data. It then generates, within the model, a decline of aggregate economic activity of a magnitude observed between 2007 and 2009, and first analyzes whether the model can generate a fall in asset prices three times the size of output, as observed in the data. The project then uses the model to measure how the welfare losses from the great recession are distributed across different age cohorts, including future generations. Finally it employs the developed model to study how the fiscal policy response to the great recession (e.g. the direct and indirect purchase of assets by the government through the Troubled Asset Relief Program, TARP) has shaped the age distribution of welfare losses implied by the downturn, and how alternative strategies to finance the cost of these policies (tax financing versus debt financing) would impact this distribution.The intended broader impact resulting from the project is (at least) twofold. First, and most directly, the developed model, calibration and the numerical algorithm to solve the model will be made publically available, and thus can be applied by any researcher interested in studying the re-distributional consequences of other large economic shocks (such as demographic shocks or natural catastrophes on a national scale) across different generations. Second, the results derived from the analysis of the actual and counterfactual hypothetical fiscal policy responses to the great recession are not only informative about the desirability of these policies in the current economic downturn, but can also provide guidance to the research and public policy discussion about the redistributive consequences of future fundamental fiscal policy reforms (including social security and Medicare reforms) that might be enacted in response to large economic crises.