Collaborative Research: Cognitively costly decision making by economic agents: micro and macro implications

这一奖项用于宏观经济学的研究。该团队首先观察到，许多(可能是大多数)经济决策需要时间、注意力和仔细的推理。换句话说，经济决策需要一种特殊的工作，称为认知努力。然而，宏观经济学中使用的大多数标准方法都假设，人们可以毫不费力地瞬间做出经济决策。研究小组将开发和分析整个经济的一个新的、易处理的模型，在这个模型中，个人、公司和机构发现推理需要代价高昂的认知努力。该模型允许这样一种可能性，即个人、企业和政策制定者可能仅仅因为确定最佳行动需要花费太多的时间和精力而做出不符合他们长期最佳利益的经济决定。这与行为科学的结果是一致的。新模型可能为我们提供新的工具来预测经济政策的效果，从而有助于美国经济增长，并促进经济学基础知识的发展。本项目研究的认知限制不是关于代理人不完全观察相关的状态变量，如利率、价格和税率。相反，这里的重点是代理不完美的计算操作，如工作小时数以及要花费和节省的金额。宏观经济学中的标准方法聚焦于不完美观察造成的问题，并假设映射是在完全理性的情况下得出的。本研究所采用的方法与实验证据是一致的。形式上，研究始于假设主体观察客观状态，但不知道它们的最优策略函数。因此，他们就如何花费昂贵的认知资源来了解政策功能做出理性决定。该团队将首先开发一个易于处理的个人行为静态框架。新出现的关键特性是，随着有关未知政策函数的信息积累，最优推理选择使代理的有效行动依赖于状态和历史，从而导致非线性、内生持久性和波动性聚集。这种非线性对小冲击既产生惯性，又对大冲击产生类似凸起的效应。第二个项目将理论分析扩展到动态环境，其中代理人充分预测当前的推理选择如何影响未来的效用和选择。第三个项目将机制设置在一个具有代表性的代理宏观模型中，并研究其聚合影响，其中微观行为的非线性特征可能会在聚合结果中重新浮出水面。在那里，共同分析了影响个体决策规则的认知局限性以及一般均衡效应的规律。第四个项目引入了异质性和不完全市场。这个奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This award funds research in macroeconomics. The team starts with the observation that many and possibly most economic decisions require time, attention, and careful reasoning. In other words, economic decisions require a specific kind of work called cognitive effort. However, most standard approaches used in macroeconomics assume that people can make their economic decisions instantaneously, with no effort. The research team will develop and analyze a new and tractable model of an entire economy where people, firms, and institutions find that reasoning requires costly cognitive effort. The model allows for the possibility that individuals, businesses, and policymakers may make economic decisions that are not in their long-run best interest simply because determining the best action takes too much time and effort. This is consistent with results from behavioral science. The new model may give us new tools to predict the effects of economic policies, and therefore could contribute to U.S. economic growth as well as advancing fundamental knowledge in economic science.The cognitive limitations studied in this project are not about agents imperfectly observing the relevant state variables such as interest rates, prices, and tax rates. Instead, the focus here is on agents imperfectly computing actions such as hours worked and how much to spend and save. The standard approach in macroeconomics focuses on issues created by imperfect observation and assumes a mapping derived under full rationality. The approach taken in this research is consistent with experimental evidence. Formally, the research starts with the assumption that agents observe the objective states but do not know their optimal policy function. They therefore make rational decisions about how to expend costly cognitive resources to learn about the policy function. The team will first develop a tractable static framework of individual behavior. The key emerging property is that as information accumulates about the unknown policy function, the optimal reasoning choice makes agents' effective actions state and history dependent, leading to non-linearity, endogenous persistence, and volatility clustering. The non-linearity generates both inertia to small shocks, and a salience like effect for large shocks. The second project extends the theoretical analysis to a dynamic setting where agents fully anticipate how current reasoning choices impact future utility and choices. The third project sets the mechanism in a representative agent macro model and studies its aggregate implications, where the non-linear features of the micro behavior are likely to re-surface in aggregate outcomes. There the cognitive limitations that affect individual decision rules as well as the preception of general equilibrium effects are jointly analyzed. The fourth project introduces heterogeneity and incomplete markets.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.