Working towards a stable and sustainable growth path - Centre For Macroeconomics ESRC Centres Transition Review

在金融危机爆发十年后，世界仍然面临许多宏观经济挑战，例如不平等加剧、低增长率、低实际利率、持续去杠杆化，以及需要新的监管和政策工具来减少世界面临另一场经济危机的可能性。CFM汇集了一系列不同但相互关联的机构，从政策制定机构（英格兰银行）到应用政策研究机构（NIESR），再到学术界（伦敦政治经济学院、剑桥大学、伦敦大学学院和牛津大学）。这一系列机构为富有想象力、与政策相关、智力健全的研究创造了一个独特的环境。更丰富的宏观经济模型，捕捉异质性、不平等和内生商业周期。近年来，研究异质性与宏观经济发展之间相互作用的模型和求解方法得到了发展。在我们的研究中，一个统一的主题是凯恩斯的老故事，即经济衰退被螺旋式下降放大，在这种螺旋式下降中，面对不确定的就业前景和有限的财富来缓冲负收入冲击的消费者宁愿持有他们的钱（预防性储蓄），而面对不确定的产品需求的公司宁愿不招人。最近的经验证据清楚地表明，消费者在经济不景气和不确定时期大幅削减消费的现象，比以前认为的要重要得多。特别是，有证据表明，有许多消费者虽然相当富有，但无法缓冲意外的负面冲击，因为他们的财富是一种非流动性的形式，即房屋。也就是说，也有一些富人在经济上受到限制，充当着“仅能糊口”的消费者。如果有更多的人因为不完善的保险而通过大幅减少消费增长来应对负面发展，那么将这一特征纳入商业周期模型而不是依赖于代表性代理范式就更重要了，因为代表性代理范式依赖于消费者可以完全自我保险的假设。更丰富的宏观经济与网络和跨部门的互动。网络理论的思想是将个人和企业相互交易的实际网络的良好描述纳入经济模型。在这种模型中，买方（卖方）不能自由接触经济中的所有卖方（买方），而只能接触选定数量的（附近的）贸易伙伴。政策圈了解这种网络的重要性以及某些公司在这种网络中的关键作用。例如，2008年秋天，福特汽车公司（Ford Motor Co.）总裁穆拉利（Alan Mulally）请求政府支持其竞争对手通用汽车（General Motors）和克莱斯勒（Chrysler）。这些竞争对手的生存对福特很重要，因为他们的失败会导致他们的供应商的失败，这对福特提供必要的投入是至关重要的。基于更好的宏观经济模型的新经济环境的新政策工具。这场危机不仅改变了宏观经济学家看待世界的方式，也从根本上改变了经济政策。金融危机期间推行的货币政策依赖于新的活动，如量化宽松（对特定金融市场的大规模干预）和对未来货币政策决策的前瞻性指导。这些政策至今仍在执行，并可能成为标准货币政策工具的一部分。在设定更严格的标准和关注流动性供应和杠杆等额外特征方面，金融监管发生了变化。此外，金融监管已经扩展到包括宏观审慎工具，这些工具考虑了整个经济的风险。在CFM，我们使用上述新框架来考虑新环境下的政策工具。

Ten years after the onset of the financial crisis, the world still faces many macroeconomic challenges, such as increased inequality, low growth rates, low real interest rates, continued deleveraging, and a need for new regulation and policy tools to reduce the chance the world facing another economic crisis. The CFM brings together a diverse, but interconnected, set of institutions, which range from the policy making (Bank of England) through applied policy research (NIESR) to academia (LSE, University of Cambridge, University College London, and University of Oxford). This set of institutions creates a unique environment for imaginative, policy relevant, and intellectually robust research. Richer macroeconomic models capturing heterogeneity, inequality and endogenous business cycles.Recently, models and solution methods have been developed to study the interaction between heterogeneity and macroeconomic developments. A unifying theme in our research is the old Keynesian story of a recession being amplified by a downward spiral in which consumers who are facing uncertain job prospects and limited wealth to buffer negative income shocks prefer to hold on their money (precautionary savings) and firms who are facing uncertain demand for their products prefer not to hire. Recent empirical evidence has made clear that the observation of consumers sharply cutting back on consumption during bad and uncertain times is a much more important phenomenon than previously thought. In particular, it has been shown that there are many consumers who, although quite wealthy, cannot buffer unexpected negative shocks, because their wealth is in an illiquid form, namely houses. That is, there are also rich people who are financially constrained and act as 'hand-to-mouth' consumers. If there are more people who respond to negative developments by sharply reducing consumption increases because of imperfect insurance, then it is more important to incorporate this feature in business cycle models and not to rely on the representative agent paradigm, which relies on the assumption that consumers can perfectly self-insure.Richer macroeconomics with networks and interactions across sectors. The idea of network theory is to incorporate into economic models a good description of the actual network through which individuals and firms transact with each other. In such models, buyers (sellers) do not have free access to all sellers (buyers) in the economy, but only to a select number of (nearby) trading partners. The importance of such networks and the crucial role of some firms in such networks is understood in policy circles. For example, in the fall of 2008, the president of Ford Motor Co., Alan Mulally, requested government support for Ford's rivals General Motors and Chrysler. Survival of these competitors was important for Ford because their failures would result in the failures of their suppliers, which were essential for Ford being supplied with its necessary inputs.New policy tools for a new economic environment based on better macroeconomic models. The crisis has not only changed the way macroeconomists look at the world: it has also fundamentally changed economic policy. Monetary policies pursued during the financial crisis relied on new activities, such as quantitative easing (large scale interventions in particular financial markets) and forward guidance on future monetary policy decisions. These policies are still being pursued today and may become part of the standard set of monetary policy tools. Financial oversight has changed in terms of setting tougher standards and focusing on additional characteristics such as liquidity provision and leverage. Moreover, financial oversight has been extended to include macroprudential tools that consider the risks to the economy as a whole. At the CFM we use the new frameworks described above to consider policy tools in this new environment.