经济学顶刊ECONOMETRICA 2023年第2期

ECONOMETRICA 2023年第2期

MAR, 2023, VOLUME 91, ISSUE 2

 

 

——更多动态，请持续关注gzh：理想主义的百年孤独

 

 

Dynamic Spatial General Equilibrium

动态空间一般均衡

https://doi.org/10.3982/ECTA20273

Benny Kleinman, Ernest Liu, Stephen J. Redding

We incorporate forward‐looking capital accumulation into a dynamic discrete choice model of migration. We characterize the steady‐state equilibrium; generalize existing dynamic exact‐hat algebra techniques to incorporate investment; and linearize the model to provide an analytical characterization of the economy's transition path using spectral analysis. We show that capital and labor dynamics interact to shape the economy's speed of adjustment toward steady state. We implement our quantitative analysis using data on capital stocks, populations, and bilateral trade and migration flows for U.S. states from 1965–2015. We show that this interaction between capital and labor dynamics plays a central role in explaining the observed decline in the rate of income convergence across U.S. states and the persistent and heterogeneous impact of local shocks.

我们将前瞻性资本积累纳入迁移的动态离散选择模型。我们对稳态均衡进行了表征;推广现有的动态精确代数技术，以纳入投资;并将模型线性化，以使用光谱分析提供经济转型路径的分析表征。我们表明，资本和劳动力动态相互作用，塑造了经济向稳定状态的调整速度。我们利用1965—2015年美国各州的资本存量、人口、双边贸易和移民流动数据进行定量分析。我们的研究表明，资本和劳动力动态之间的这种相互作用在解释美国各州收入趋同率的下降以及地方冲击的持续和异质性影响方面发挥了核心作用。

 

 

Optimal Regulation of Noncompete Contracts

竞业禁止合同的最优规制

https://doi.org/10.3982/ECTA18128

Liyan Shi

I study regulation of noncompete employment contracts, assessing the trade‐off between restricting worker mobility and encouraging firm investment. I develop an on‐the‐job search model in which firms and workers sign dynamic wage contracts with noncompete clauses and firms invest in their workers' general human capital. Employers use noncompete clauses to enforce buyout payments when their workers depart, ultimately extracting rent from future employers. This rent extraction is socially excessive, and restrictions on these clauses can improve efficiency. The optimal regulation policy is characterized. In an application to the managerial labor market using a novel contract data set, I find the optimal policy to be quantitatively close to a ban.

我研究了竞业禁止雇佣合同的规定，评估了限制工人流动和鼓励企业投资之间的权衡。我开发了一种求职模型，在这个模型中，公司和员工签订带有竞业禁止条款的动态工资合同，公司投资于员工的一般人力资本。雇主利用竞业禁止条款在员工离职时强制执行买断金，最终从未来雇主那里收取租金。这种租金提取在社会上是过度的，对这些条款加以限制可以提高效率。对最优调控策略进行了表征。在一个利用新型合同数据集的管理劳动力市场应用中，我发现最优政策在定量上接近禁令。

 

 

Synthetic Control As Online Linear Regression

综合控制与在线线性回归

https://doi.org/10.3982/ECTA20720

Jiafeng Chen

This paper notes a simple connection between synthetic control and online learning. Specifically, we recognize synthetic control as an instance of Follow‐The‐Leader (FTL). Standard results in online convex optimization then imply that, even when outcomes are chosen by an adversary, synthetic control predictions of counterfactual outcomes for the treated unit perform almost as well as an oracle weighted average of control units' outcomes. Synthetic control on differenced data performs almost as well as oracle weighted difference‐in‐differences, potentially making it an attractive choice in practice. We argue that this observation further supports the use of synthetic control estimators in comparative case studies.

本文指出了综合控制与在线学习之间的简单联系。具体地说，我们认为合成控制是跟随-领导者(FTL)的一个实例。在线凸优化的标准结果意味着，即使结果是由对手选择的，对处理单元的反事实结果的综合控制预测几乎与对控制单元结果的甲骨文加权平均一样好。对不同数据的综合控制几乎与oracle加权差中差一样好，这可能使其成为实践中有吸引力的选择。我们认为，这一观察结果进一步支持在比较案例研究中使用合成控制估计量。

 

 

Bidding in Common-Value Auctions with an Unknown Number of Competitors

在普通价值拍卖中与数量未知的竞争对手竞价

https://doi.org/10.3982/ECTA17793

Stephan Lauermann, Andre Speit

This paper studies a first‐price common‐value auction in which bidders do not know the number of their competitors. In contrast to the case of common‐value auctions with a known number of rival bidders, the inference from winning is not monotone, and a “winner's blessing” emerges at low bids. As a result, bidding strategies may not be strictly increasing, but instead may contain atoms. Moreover, an equilibrium fails to exist when the expected number of competitors is large and the bid space is continuous. Therefore, we consider auctions on a grid. On a fine grid, high‐signal bidders follow an essentially strictly increasing strategy, whereas low‐signal bidders pool on two adjacent bids on the grid. The solutions of a “communication extension” based on Jackson, Simon, Swinkels, and Zame (2002) capture the equilibrium bidding behavior in the limit, as the grid becomes arbitrarily fine.

本文研究了一种第一价格的普通价值拍卖，在这种拍卖中，竞标者不知道其竞争对手的数量。与已知竞标者数量的普通价值拍卖不同，中标的推论并不单调，“赢家的祝福”出现在出价较低的地方。因此，投标策略可能不会严格增加，而是可能包含原子。此外，当竞争对手的预期数量较大且投标空间连续时，均衡不存在。因此，我们考虑网格上的拍卖。在细电网中，高信号竞标者遵循本质上严格增加的策略，而低信号竞标者则在电网上两个相邻的投标中集中投标。基于Jackson、Simon、Swinkels和Zame(2002)的“通信扩展”解决方案捕捉了极限下的均衡竞价行为，因为网格变得任意精细。

 

 

Connecting to Power: Political Connections, Innovation, and Firm Dynamics

与权力的联系:政治联系、创新和公司动态

https://doi.org/10.3982/ECTA18338

Ufuk Akcigit, Salomé Baslandze, Francesca Lotti

How do political connections affect firm dynamics, innovation, and creative destruction? We extend a Schumpeterian growth model with political connections that help firms ease bureaucratic and regulatory burden. The model highlights how political connections influence an economy's business dynamism and innovation, and generates a number of implications guiding our empirical analysis. We construct a new large‐scale data set for the period 1993–2014, on the universe of firms, workers, and politicians, complemented with corporate financial statements, patent data, and election data, so as to define connected firms as those employing local politicians. We identify a leadership paradox: market leaders are much more likely to be politically connected, but much less likely to innovate. Political connections relate to a higher rate of survival, as well as growth in employment and revenues, but not in productivity—a result that we also confirm using the regression discontinuity design. At the aggregate level, gains from political connections do not offset losses stemming from lower reallocation and growth.

政治关联如何影响企业动态、创新和创造性破坏?本文扩展了一个熊彼特增长模型，引入政治关联，帮助企业减轻官僚主义和监管负担。该模型强调了政治联系如何影响一个经济体的商业活力和创新，并产生了一些指导我们实证分析的含义。我们构建了一个新的1993—2014年的大规模数据集，包括公司、工人和政治家，并补充了公司财务报表、专利数据和选举数据，以便将关联公司定义为雇佣当地政治家的公司。我们发现了一个领导力悖论:市场领导者更有可能拥有政治人脉，但创新的可能性要小得多。政治关系与更高的生存率、就业和收入增长有关，但与生产率无关——我们也使用断点回归设计证实了这一结果。总体而言，政治关系带来的收益并不能抵消较低的再分配和增长带来的损失。

 

 

 

Factions in Nondemocracies: Theory and Evidence from the Chinese Communist Party

非民主国家的派系:来自中国共产党的理论和证据

https://doi.org/10.3982/ECTA19274

Patrick Francois, Francesco Trebbi, Kairong Xiao

This paper theoretically and empirically investigates factional arrangements within the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), the governing political party of the People's Republic of China. Using detailed biographical information of political elites in the Central Committee and provincial governments, we present a set of new empirical regularities within the CCP, including systematic patterns of cross‐factional balancing at different levels of the political hierarchy and substantial faction premia in promotions. We propose and estimate an organizational economic model to characterize factional politics within single‐party nondemocratic regimes and its economic implications.

本文对中国共产党内部的派系安排进行了理论和实证研究。利用中央委员会和省级政府政治精英的详细履历信息，我们提出了一套新的中共内部经验规律，包括政治等级不同层次的跨派系平衡的系统模式和晋升中大量的派系优势。我们提出并估计了一个组织经济模型，以描述单党非民主政权中的派系政治及其经济影响。

 

 

Optimal Product Design: Implications for Competition and Growth under Declining Search Frictions

最优产品设计:搜索摩擦下降对竞争和增长的影响

https://doi.org/10.3982/ECTA19653

Guido Menzio

As search frictions in the market for a consumer product decline, buyers are able to locate and access more and more sellers. In response, sellers choose to design varieties of the product that are more and more specialized in order to take advantage of the heterogeneity in buyers' preferences. I find conditions on the fundamentals of the market under which the increase in specialization exactly offsets the decline in search frictions. Under these conditions, the extent of competition and the extent of price dispersion remain constant over time even though search frictions are vanishing. Buyer's surplus and seller's profit, however, grow over time at a constant endogenous rate, as the increase in specialization allows sellers to cater better and better to the preferences of individual buyers.

随着消费品市场的搜索摩擦减少，买家能够找到和访问越来越多的卖家。作为回应，卖方选择设计越来越专业化的产品品种，以利用买方偏好的异质性。我发现，在市场基本面的条件下，专业化程度的提高恰好抵消了搜索摩擦的下降。在这些条件下，尽管搜索摩擦正在消失，但竞争的程度和价格差异的程度随着时间的推移保持不变。然而，随着时间的推移，买方的盈余和卖方的利润以恒定的内生速度增长，因为专业化程度的提高使卖方能够更好地迎合个别买方的偏好。

 

 

Network Cluster-Robust Inference

网络聚类标准误推断

https://doi.org/10.3982/ECTA19816
p. 641-667

Michael P. Leung

Since network data commonly consists of observations from a single large network, researchers often partition the network into clusters in order to apply cluster‐robust inference methods. Existing such methods require clusters to be asymptotically independent. Under mild conditions, we prove that, for this requirement to hold for network‐dependent data, it is necessary and sufficient that clusters have low conductance, the ratio of edge boundary size to volume. This yields a simple measure of cluster quality. We find in simulations that when clusters have low conductance, cluster‐robust methods control size better than HAC estimators. However, for important classes of networks lacking low‐conductance clusters, the former can exhibit substantial size distortion. To determine the number of low‐conductance clusters and construct them, we draw on results in spectral graph theory that connect conductance to the spectrum of the graph Laplacian. Based on these results, we propose to use the spectrum to determine the number of low‐conductance clusters and spectral clustering to construct them.

由于网络数据通常由来自单个大型网络的观测数据组成，研究人员经常将网络划分为集群，以便应用集群鲁棒推理方法。现有的这类方法要求聚类是渐近独立的。在温和的条件下，我们证明，对于网络相关数据的这一要求，簇具有低电导是必要和充分的，即边缘边界大小与体积的比率。这产生了一个简单的集群质量度量。我们在模拟中发现，当集群具有低电导时，集群鲁棒方法比HAC估计器更好地控制规模。然而，对于缺乏低电导簇的重要类别的网络，前者可能表现出巨大的尺寸失真。为了确定低电导簇的数量并构建它们，我们借鉴了频谱图理论中的结果，将电导与拉普拉斯图的频谱联系起来。基于这些结果，我们建议使用频谱来确定低电导簇的数量和频谱聚类来构建它们。

 

 

Is Attention Produced Optimally? Theory and Evidence from Experiments with Bandwidth Enhancements

注意力的产生是最佳的吗?带宽增强的理论和实验证据

https://doi.org/10.3982/ECTA20400

Erin T. Bronchetti, Judd B. Kessler, Ellen B. Magenheim, Dmitry Taubinsky, Eric Zwick

This paper develops and deploys a methodology for testing whether people correctly value tools that reduce attention costs. We call these tools bandwidth enhancements (BEs) and characterize how demand for BEs varies with the pecuniary incentives to be attentive, under the null hypothesis of correct perceptions and optimal choice. We examine if the theoretical optimality conditions are satisfied in three experiments. The first is a field experiment (n = 1373) with an online education platform, in which we randomize incentives to complete course modules and incentives to utilize a plan‐making tool to complete the modules. In the second experiment (n = 2306), participants must complete a survey in the future. We randomize survey‐completion incentives and how long participants must wait to complete the survey, and we elicit willingness to pay for reminders. The third experiment (n = 1465) involves a psychometric task in which participants must identify whether there are more correct or incorrect mathematical equations in an image. We vary incentives for accuracy, elicit willingness to pay to reduce task difficulty, and examine the impact of learning and feedback. In all experiments, demand for reducing attention costs increases as incentives for accurate task completion increase. However, in all experiments—and across all conditions—our tests imply that this increase in demand is too small relative to the null of correct perceptions. These results suggest that people may be uncertain or systematically biased about their attention cost functions, and that experience and feedback do not necessarily eliminate bias.

本文开发并部署了一种方法来测试人们是否正确地重视降低注意力成本的工具。我们将这些工具称为带宽增强(BEs)，并描述了在正确感知和最佳选择的零假设下，对BEs的需求如何随着关注的金钱激励而变化。我们在三个实验中检验了理论最优性条件是否满足。第一个是在线教育平台的现场实验(n = 1373)，在这个实验中，我们随机分配完成课程模块的激励措施，以及使用计划制定工具完成模块的激励措施。在第二个实验中(n = 2306)，被试必须在未来完成问卷调查。我们对完成调查的激励措施和参与者必须等待多长时间才能完成调查进行随机化，并引出他们为提醒而付费的意愿。第三个实验(n = 1465)涉及一项心理测量任务，参与者必须识别图像中的数学方程是正确的还是错误的。我们改变对准确性的激励，促使人们愿意为降低任务难度而付费，并检查学习和反馈的影响。在所有实验中，降低注意成本的需求随着准确完成任务的激励增加而增加。然而，在所有的实验中，以及在所有的条件下，我们的测试都表明，相对于正确认知的无效，这种需求的增长太小了。这些结果表明，人们可能对自己的注意力成本函数存在不确定性或系统性偏见，而经验和反馈不一定能消除偏见。

 

 

Constrained Conditional Moment Restriction Models

约束条件矩约束模型

https://doi.org/10.3982/ECTA13830

Victor Chernozhukov, Whitney K. Newey, Andres Santos

Shape restrictions have played a central role in economics as both testable implications of theory and sufficient conditions for obtaining informative counterfactual predictions. In this paper, we provide a general procedure for inference under shape restrictions in identified and partially identified models defined by conditional moment restrictions. Our test statistics and proposed inference methods are based on the minimum of the generalized method of moments (GMM) objective function with and without shape restrictions. Uniformly valid critical values are obtained through a bootstrap procedure that approximates a subset of the true local parameter space. In an empirical analysis of the effect of childbearing on female labor supply, we show that employing shape restrictions in linear instrumental variables (IV) models can lead to shorter confidence regions for both local and average treatment effects. Other applications we discuss include inference for the variability of quantile IV treatment effects and for bounds on average equivalent variation in a demand model with general heterogeneity.

形状限制在经济学中扮演着核心角色，既是理论的可测试含义，也是获得信息性反事实预测的充分条件。在这篇论文中，我们提供了在形状限制下，由条件矩限制定义的识别和部分识别模型的推理的一般程序。我们的检验统计量和提出的推理方法是基于有和没有形状限制的广义矩量法(GMM)目标函数的最小值。一致有效的临界值是通过一个bootstrap过程获得的，该过程近似于真实局部参数空间的子集。在对生育对女性劳动力供给影响的实证分析中，我们表明，在线性工具变量(IV)模型中采用形状限制可以导致局部和平均处理效果的置信区域更短。我们讨论的其他应用包括对分位数IV治疗效果可变性的推断，以及对具有一般异质性的需求模型中平均等效变异的界限的推断。

 

 

When Is Parallel Trends Sensitive to Functional Form?

平行趋势何时对函数形式敏感?

https://doi.org/10.3982/ECTA19402

Jonathan Roth, Pedro H. C. Sant'Anna

This paper assesses when the validity of difference‐in‐differences depends on functional form. We provide a novel characterization: the parallel trends assumption holds under all strictly monotonic transformations of the outcome if and only if a stronger “parallel trends”‐type condition holds for the cumulative distribution function of untreated potential outcomes. This condition for parallel trends to be insensitive to functional form is satisfied if and essentially only if the population can be partitioned into a subgroup for which treatment is effectively randomly assigned and a remaining subgroup for which the distribution of untreated potential outcomes is stable over time. These conditions have testable implications, and we introduce falsification tests for the null that parallel trends is insensitive to functional form.

本文评估了双重差分的有效性何时取决于函数形式。我们提供了一个新颖的表征:当且仅当未经处理的潜在结果的累积分布函数具有更强的“平行趋势”类型条件时，平行趋势假设在结果的所有严格单调变换下成立。这种平行趋势对功能形式不敏感的条件是满足的，当且基本上只有当人群可以划分为一个有效随机分配治疗的亚组和一个剩余的亚组，其未治疗的潜在结果的分布随着时间的推移是稳定的。这些条件具有可测试的含义，并且我们对并行趋势对函数形式不敏感的空值引入了证伪测试。