Credit and Labour Market Foundations of the Macroeconomy

这场危机及其后果给宏观经济学带来了许多挑战。过去30年来，宏观经济学的主要方法论一直是一类模型，这些模型假设公司、个人等之间不存在异质性，并假设个人可以进入运转良好的保险市场。这些模型因无法洞察当前的危机而受到广泛批评。这场危机突显了一)劳动力市场反应的极端性质，因为失业率居高不下，而名义工资仍然缺乏弹性；二)信贷市场在产生和传播冲击方面的重要性。我们认为，更深入地了解信贷和劳动力市场，它们如何相互作用，以及这些市场的冲击如何聚集和传播，对于理解宏观经济是至关重要的。这一议程要求建立一个基于信贷和劳动力市场现实特征的经济模型，这些特征包括代理人之间的信息差异、对风险的态度不同、无法对未来所有意外情况进行具体说明或订立合同，以及认识到合同可执行性的局限性。它要求理解单个市场的行为是如何聚合的，以及宏观经济环境又是如何反馈给各个市场的。我们的目标是改变宏观经济学的研究，并将其建立在对信贷和劳动力市场的透彻理解的基础上。信贷市场：我们将考虑为什么金融市场偶尔会枯竭，为什么银行同时拆借和拆借，以及这如何影响金融风险和货币政策。这一分析的一个重要组成部分是，资产持有者和潜在买家之间的信息差异造成了流动性不足，即持有者发现一旦进行资产交易，逆转交易的成本就会很高。传染性流动性不足与市场失灵之间的关系，就像我们在金融危机中看到的那样，是这一主题的核心要素。劳动力市场：传统模型很难解释就业和工资的波动和反应迟缓。我们将从两个角度调查这个问题。首先，我们将通过研究求职者如何决定申请哪些工作，这种情况如何随着失业而变化，以及选择如何取决于职业、工资和出行距离，来研究标准求职模型的黑匣子。其次，我们将考察找工作完成后就业关系的性质，它的持久性，工资和生产率的演变，以及两者对当前、过去和预期宏观经济状况的依赖。宏观经济：经济是单个市场活动的集合。重要的是要知道，单个市场层面的行为在总体层面上是被放大了还是被淘汰了。例如，如果企业层面的就业反应迟缓，这是否意味着宏观层面的反应迟滞？要理解这一聚合问题，需要深入了解企业层面的就业反应结构。我们预计，对信贷和劳动力市场以及它们如何聚合的联合分析，将为理解宏观经济提供新的见解。

The crisis and its aftermath have thrown up many challenges for macroeconomics. For the past thirty years the predominant methodology in macroeconomics has been a class of models that assume an absence of heterogeneity across firms, individuals, etc., and assume that individuals have access to well-functioning insurance markets. These models have been widely criticised for providing no insight into the current crisis. The crisis has highlighted i) the extreme nature of labour market responses as unemployment has remained high while nominal wages have remained inflexible; ii) the importance of credit markets in generating as well as propagating shocks.. It is our view that that a deeper understanding of credit and labour markets, how they interact and how shocks in these markets aggregate and propagate is fundamental to the understanding of the macroeconomy. This agenda requires building a model of the economy based on realistic features of credit and labour markets including differences in information among agents, differences in attitudes towards risk, the inability to specify or contract upon all future contingencies, and recognising the limits of contractual enforceability. It requires an understanding of how behaviour in individual markets aggregates and how, in turn, the macroeconomic environment feeds back to individual markets. Our aim is to transform research in macroeconomics and to build its foundations on a thorough understanding of credit and labour markets.Credit markets: We will consider why financial markets occasionally dry up, why banks simultaneously borrow and lend to each other and how this affects financial risk and monetary policy. An important component of this analysis is that differences in information between holders of assets and potential buyers creates illiquidity, that is, holders find it costly to reverse an asset trade once made. The relationship between contagious illiquidity and market failure, such as we have seen in the financial crisis, is a core element of this theme.Labour markets: Traditional models have difficulties accounting for the fluctuations, and the sluggishness in responses, of employment and wages. We will investigate this issue from two angles. First, we will look into the black-box of standard job search models by examining how job-seekers determine which jobs to apply for, how this changes with unemployment and how selections depend on occupation, salary and travel distance. Second, we will examine the nature of the employment relationship after job search is completed, its durability, the evolution of wages and productivity and the dependence of both on current, past, and anticipated macroeconomic conditions.The macroeconomy: An economy is the aggregation of the activities in individual markets. It is important to know if behaviour at the level of individual markets is amplified or washed-out at the aggregate level. For example, if employment responses at the firm level are sluggish, does this imply sluggish responses at the macro level? Understanding this aggregation issue requires insight into the structure of employment responses at the firm level. We expect that the joint analysis of credit and labour markets and how they aggregate will provide new insights for the understanding of the macroeconomy.