Price Rigidity and The Granular Origin of Aggregate Fluctuations

该奖项资助宏观经济学研究，研究价格刚性对整个美国经济总体波动起源的影响。这解决了一个更大的问题，即公司、行业或经济部门层面的冲击是否以及如何影响总体经济结果。PI假设，价格刚性，特别是不同经济部门之间的刚性，是由总体冲击产生的波动的很大一部分。这项研究的结果将有助于我们理解价格刚性如何与企业规模和企业之间的联系等因素相互作用。该项目有可能提高我们对如何模拟商业周期波动以及如何制定宏观经济政策以促进经济稳定和增长的理解。这个项目的前提是价格可以是刚性的。由于价格是冲击的主要传导机制，价格刚性的程度对部门一级生产力冲击的传导具有重要影响。价格刚性削弱了上游和下游的反应（二阶一般均衡效应除外）。价格刚性的异质性也很重要。例如，价格非常灵活的小部门可能会传递与价格非常刚性的大部门一样多的微观冲击。类似的直觉也适用于互联性。这意味着价格刚性改变了规模和关联性的有效分布，初步的理论分析表明，这反过来又改变了特质冲击的总体影响。特别是，销售额不再是一个充分的统计数据，说明具体部门的冲击对总体波动的影响。独立地，价格刚性也会影响推动总体波动的部门的身份。在价格刚性下，一个部门可能不再表现出任何反应，而没有价格刚性，这是一个非常重要的部门的总波动。研究计划的第一步是构建和校准一个精细分解的美国经济一般均衡模型，其中包括投入产出关系以及行业规模和价格刚性程度的信息。然后，第二步将利用这一框架来预测不频繁的价格变化如何累积特定部门冲击的影响。最后，作者将校准和模拟模型的经济，以研究价格刚性的定量重要性。这个奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并已被认为是值得通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估的支持。

This award funds research in macroeconomics that will study the effect of price rigidity on the origins of aggregate fluctuations in the entire U.S. economy. This addresses one piece of a larger question about whether and how shocks at the level of a firm, industry, or economic sector affect aggregate economic outcomes. The PIs hypothesize that price rigidity, and in particular the kind of rigidity that varies between different economic sectors, is responsible for a substantial fraction of the volatility generated by aggregate shocks. The results of this research will help us understand how price rigidity interacts with factors such as firm size and connections between firms. The project has potential to improve our understanding of how to model business cycle fluctuations, as well as how to build macroeconomic policies to promote economic stability and growth. This project begins from the premise that prices can be rigid. Since prices are the key transmission mechanism of shocks, the degree of price rigidity has important implications for the transmission of sector-level productivity shocks. Price rigidity attenuates upstream and downstream responses (second-order general equilibrium effects aside). Heterogeneity in price rigidity matters as well. For example, small sectors with very flexible prices may transmit as much of a micro shock as large sectors with very rigid prices. Similar intuition applies to interconnectedness. What this means is that price rigidity changes the effective distributions of size and interconnectedness.Preliminary theoretical analysis indicates that this, in turn, changes the aggregate implications of idiosyncratic shocks. In particular,sales are no longer a sufficient statistic for the contribution of sector-specific shocks to aggregate volatility. Independently, price rigidity can also affect the identity of sectors driving aggregate fluctuations. Under price rigidity, a sector may no longer show any response while absent price rigidity, it was a very important sector for aggregate fluctuations. The first step in the research plan is to construct and calibrate a finely disaggregated general equilibrium model of the U.S. economy that includes input-output relationships as well as information on industry size and degree of price rigidity. The second step will then employ this framework to derive predictions how infrequent price changes aggregate the impact of sector-specific shocks. Finally, the authors will calibrate and simulate the model economy in order to study the quantitative importance of price rigidity.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.