经济学顶刊Econometrica 2023年第1期
Econometrica 2023年第1期
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1.Invidious Comparisons: Ranking and Selection as Compound Decisions
令人反感的比较:作为复合决策的排名和选择
Jiaying Gu, Roger Koenker
There is an innate human tendency, one might call it the “league table mentality,” to construct rankings. Schools, hospitals, sports teams, movies, and myriad other objects are ranked even though their inherent multi‐dimensionality would suggest that—at best—only partial orderings were possible. We consider a large class of elementary ranking problems in which we observe noisy, scalar measurements of merit for n objects of potentially heterogeneous precision and are asked to select a group of the objects that are “most meritorious.” The problem is naturally formulated in the compound decision framework of Robbins's (1956) empirical Bayes theory, but it also exhibits close connections to the recent literature on multiple testing. The nonparametric maximum likelihood estimator for mixture models (Kiefer and Wolfowitz (1956)) is employed to construct optimal ranking and selection rules. Performance of the rules is evaluated in simulations and an application to ranking U.S. kidney dialysis centers.
人类有一种天生的倾向，人们可以称之为“排名心态”，来构建排名。学校、医院、运动队、电影和无数其他物体被排序，尽管它们固有的多维度表明——最多只能进行部分排序——是可能的。我们考虑了一类很大的基本排序问题，在这些问题中，我们观察到n个具有潜在异质性精度的对象的噪声、标量值的优点测量，并被要求选择一组”最有价值”的对象。这个问题在Robbins(1956)的经验贝叶斯理论的复合决策框架中很自然地得到了阐述，但它也与最近关于多重检验的文献表现出了密切的联系。混合模型的非参数极大似然估计(Kiefer and Wolfowitz, 1956)被用来构造最优排序和选择规则。这些规则的表现在模拟和美国肾脏透析中心排名的应用程序中进行评估。
2.Misallocation and Capital Market Integration: Evidence From India
错配与资本市场一体化:来自印度的证据
https://doi.org/10.3982/ECTA19039
Natalie Bau, Adrien Matray
We show that foreign capital liberalization reduces capital misallocation and increases aggregate productivity for affected industries in India. The staggered liberalization of access to foreign capital across disaggregated industries allows us to identify changes in firms' input wedges, overcoming major challenges in the measurement of the effects of changing misallocation. Liberalization increases capital overall. For domestic firms with initially high marginal revenue products of capital (MRPK), liberalization increases revenues by 23%, physical capital by 53%, wage bills by 28%, and reduces MRPK by 33% relative to low MRPK firms. The effects of liberalization are largest in areas with less developed local banking sectors, indicating that inefficiencies in that sector may cause misallocation. Finally, we propose an assumption under which a novel method exploiting natural experiments can be used to bound the effect of changes in misallocation on treated industries' aggregate productivity. These industries' Solow residual increases by 3–16%.
我们表明，外国资本自由化减少了资本错配，并提高了印度受影响行业的总生产率。在各个细分行业逐步放开外资准入，使我们能够发现企业投入楔的变化，克服了在衡量不断变化的错配影响方面的重大挑战。自由化总体上增加了资本。相对于资本边际收益产品(MRPK)较低的国内企业，自由化使其收入增加23%，实物资本增加53%，工资支出增加28%，MRPK降低33%。自由化的影响在当地银行部门较不发达的地区最大，这表明该部门的低效率可能导致分配不当。最后，我们提出了一个假设，在这个假设下，一种利用自然实验的新方法可以用来约束错配变化对处理过的行业总生产率的影响。这些行业的索洛剩余增加了3-16%。
3.Nonparametric Estimates of Demand in the California Health Insurance Exchange
加州健康保险交易所需求的非参数估计
https://doi.org/10.3982/ECTA17215
Pietro Tebaldi, Alexander Torgovitsky, Hanbin Yang
We develop a new nonparametric approach for discrete choice and use it to analyze the demand for health insurance in the California Affordable Care Act marketplace. The model allows for endogenous prices and instrumental variables, while avoiding parametric functional form assumptions about the unobserved components of utility. We use the approach to estimate bounds on the effects of changing premiums or subsidies on coverage choices, consumer surplus, and government spending on subsidies. We find that a $10 decrease in monthly premium subsidies would cause a decline of between 1.8% and 6.7% in the proportion of subsidized adults with coverage. The reduction in total annual consumer surplus would be between $62 and $74 million, while the savings in yearly subsidy outlays would be between $207 and $602 million. We estimate the demand impacts of linking subsidies to age, finding that shifting subsidies from older to younger buyers would increase average consumer surplus, with potentially large impacts on enrollment. We also estimate the consumer surplus impact of removing the highly‐subsidized plans in the Silver metal tier, where we find that a nonparametric model is consistent with a wide range of possibilities. We find that comparable mixed logit models tend to yield price sensitivity estimates toward the lower end of the nonparametric bounds, while producing consumer surplus impacts that can be both higher and lower than the nonparametric bounds depending on the specification of random coefficients.
我们为离散选择开发了一种新的非参数方法，并用它来分析加州平价医疗法案市场对健康保险的需求。该模型允许内生价格和工具变量，同时避免了关于效用未观察到的成分的参数函数形式假设。我们使用该方法来估计改变保费或补贴对保险范围选择、消费者剩余和政府补贴支出的影响界限。我们发现，每月保费补贴减少10美元，将导致获得补贴的成年人比例下降1.8%至6.7%。全年消费者剩余总额将减少6400万元至7400万元，而每年的补贴支出将节省2.07亿元至6.02亿元。我们估计了将补贴与年龄挂钩的需求影响，发现将补贴从年龄较大的买家转移到年龄较小的买家将增加平均消费者剩余，这可能对入学率产生巨大影响。我们还估计了在银金属层取消高补贴计划对消费者剩余的影响，在那里我们发现非参数模型与广泛的可能性是一致的。我们发现，可比较的混合logit模型倾向于产生价格敏感性估计，接近非参数边界的下端，同时产生的消费者剩余影响可能高于或低于非参数边界，这取决于随机系数的规范。
4.Nexus Tax Laws and Economies of Density in E-Commerce: A Study of Amazon's Fulfillment Center Network
电子商务中的Nexus税法与密度经济:亚马逊配送中心网络研究
https://doi.org/10.3982/ECTA15265
p. 147-190
Jean‐François Houde, Peter Newberry, Katja Seim
We quantify the distortionary effects of nexus tax laws on Amazon's distribution network investments between 1999 and 2018. We highlight the role of two features of the expansion of Amazon's network: densification of the network of distribution facilities and vertical integration into package sortation. Densification results in a reduction in the cost of shipping orders, but comes at the expense of higher facility operating costs in more expensive areas and lower scale economies of processing shipments. Nexus laws furthermore generate additional sales tax liabilities as the network grows. Combining data on household spending across online and offline retailers with detailed data on Amazon's distribution network, we quantify these trade‐offs through a static model of demand and a dynamic model of investment. Our results suggest that Amazon's expansion led to significant shipping cost savings and facilitated the realization of aggregate economies of scale. We find that abolishing nexus tax laws in favor of a non‐discriminatory tax policy would induce the company to decentralize its network, lowering its shipping costs. Non‐discriminatory taxation would also entail lower revenue, however, as tax‐inclusive prices would rise, resulting in a fall in profit overall. This drop and the decline in consumer welfare from higher taxes together fall short of the increases in tax revenue and rival profit, suggesting that the abolishment of nexus laws would lead to an increase in total welfare.
我们量化了1999年至2018年期间nexus税法对亚马逊分销网络投资的扭曲影响。我们强调了亚马逊网络扩张的两个特点的作用:配送设施网络的密集化和包装分类的垂直整合。致密化的结果是降低了运输订单的成本，但代价是在更昂贵的地区增加了设施运营成本，并降低了加工运输的规模经济。随着网络的增长，Nexus法律还产生了额外的销售税负债。我们将线上和线下零售商的家庭支出数据与亚马逊分销网络的详细数据相结合，通过静态需求模型和动态投资模型来量化这些权衡。我们的研究结果表明，亚马逊的扩张带来了显著的运输成本节约，并促进了总体规模经济的实现。我们发现，废除nexus税法，支持非歧视性税收政策，将诱使该公司分散其网络，降低其运输成本。然而，由于含税价格将上升，非歧视性税收也将导致收入减少，从而导致整体利润下降。这种下降和更高税收带来的消费者福利下降加在一起，没有达到税收收入和竞争对手利润的增长，这表明废除关系法将导致总福利的增加。
5.Graphon games: A statistical framework for network games and interventions
Graphon games:网络游戏和干预的统计框架
https://doi.org/10.3982/ECTA17564
Francesca Parise, Asuman Ozdaglar
In this paper, we present a unifying framework for analyzing equilibria and designing interventions for large network games sampled from a stochastic network formation process represented by a graphon. To this end, we introduce a new class of infinite population games, termed graphon games, in which a continuum of heterogeneous agents interact according to a graphon, and we show that equilibria of graphon games can be used to approximate equilibria of large network games sampled from the graphon. This suggests a new approach for design of interventions and parameter inference based on the limiting infinite population graphon game. We show that, under some regularity assumptions, such approach enables the design of asymptotically optimal interventions via the solution of an optimization problem with much lower dimension than the one based on the entire network structure. We illustrate our framework on a synthetic data set and show that the graphon intervention can be computed efficiently and based solely on aggregated relational data.
在本文中，我们提出了一个统一的框架，用于分析大型网络博弈的均衡和设计干预措施，这些措施来自一个以石墨子为代表的随机网络形成过程。为此，我们引入了一类新的无限群体博弈，称为graphon博弈，在这种博弈中，一个连续的异质代理根据一个graphon相互作用，我们证明了graphon博弈的均衡可以用来近似从graphon采样的大型网络博弈的均衡。这为基于极限无限群体玻色子博弈的干预设计和参数推断提供了一种新的方法。我们表明，在某些规则性假设下，这种方法能够通过解决比基于整个网络结构的优化问题低得多的维数来设计渐近最优干预。我们在一个合成数据集上演示了我们的框架，并展示了graphon干预可以高效地计算，并且仅基于聚合的关系数据。
6.The Race Between Preferences and Technology
偏好和技术之间的竞争
https://doi.org/10.3982/ECTA18580
Joachim Hubmer
This paper argues that a unified analysis of consumption and production is required to understand the long‐run behavior of the U.S. labor share. First, using household data on the universe of consumer spending, I document that higher‐income households spend relatively more on labor‐intensive goods and services as a share of their total consumption. Interpreted as nonhomothetic preferences, this fact implies that economic growth increases the aggregate labor share through an income effect. Second, using disaggregated data on factor shares and capital intensities, I document that equipment‐intensive goods experienced relatively larger declines in their labor shares. Based on this finding, I estimate that capital and labor are gross substitutes, and that investment‐specific technical change reduces the labor share. Given the estimated elasticities, a parsimonious neoclassical model quantitatively matches the observed low‐frequency movements in the aggregate labor share since the 1950s, both its relative stability until about 1980 and its decline thereafter.
本文认为，为了理解美国劳动收入占比的长期行为，需要对消费和生产进行统一的分析。首先，利用家庭消费支出数据，我发现收入较高的家庭在劳动密集型商品和服务上的支出占总消费的比例相对较高。这一事实被解释为非同态偏好，意味着经济增长通过收入效应提高了总劳动收入占比。其次，利用要素份额和资本密集度的分类数据，我证明了设备密集型商品的劳动份额经历了相对较大的下降。基于这一发现，我估计资本和劳动力是总量替代品，特定于投资的技术变革降低了劳动占比。考虑到估计的弹性，一个简约的新古典模型定量地匹配了自20世纪50年代以来观察到的总劳动收入占比的低频运动，包括1980年前后的相对稳定和此后的下降。
7.Counterfactual Sensitivity and Robustness
反事实敏感性和稳健性
https://doi.org/10.3982/ECTA17232
Timothy Christensen, Benjamin Connault
We propose a framework for analyzing the sensitivity of counterfactuals to parametric assumptions about the distribution of latent variables in structural models. In particular, we derive bounds on counterfactuals as the distribution of latent variables spans nonparametric neighborhoods of a given parametric specification while other “structural” features of the model are maintained. Our approach recasts the infinite‐dimensional problem of optimizing the counterfactual with respect to the distribution of latent variables (subject to model constraints) as a finite‐dimensional convex program. We also develop an MPEC version of our method to further simplify computation in models with endogenous parameters (e.g., value functions) defined by equilibrium constraints. We propose plug‐in estimators of the bounds and two methods for inference. We also show that our bounds converge to the sharp nonparametric bounds on counterfactuals as the neighborhood size becomes large. To illustrate the broad applicability of our procedure, we present empirical applications to matching models with transferable utility and dynamic discrete choice models.
我们提出了一个框架，用于分析反事实对结构模型中潜在变量分布的参数假设的敏感性。特别是，当潜在变量的分布跨越给定参数规范的非参数邻域时，我们推导出反事实的边界，而模型的其他“结构”特征保持不变。我们的方法将无限维的反事实问题(针对潜在变量的分布(受制于模型约束)进行优化)重新塑造为有限维的凸程序。我们还开发了我们的方法的MPEC版本，以进一步简化由平衡约束定义的内生参数(例如，值函数)模型中的计算。我们提出了边界的插入估计器和两种推断方法。我们还表明，当邻域大小变大时，我们的边界收敛到反事实上的尖锐非参数边界。为了说明我们的程序的广泛适用性，我们提出了与可转移效用和动态离散选择模型匹配的实证应用。
8.Inference for Large-Scale Linear Systems with Known Coefficients
已知系数的大规模线性系统的推理
https://doi.org/10.3982/ECTA18979
Zheng Fang, Andres Santos, Azeem M. Shaikh, Alexander Torgovitsky
This paper considers the problem of testing whether there exists a non‐negative solution to a possibly under‐determined system of linear equations with known coefficients. This hypothesis testing problem arises naturally in a number of settings, including random coefficient, treatment effect, and discrete choice models, as well as a class of linear programming problems. As a first contribution, we obtain a novel geometric characterization of the null hypothesis in terms of identified parameters satisfying an infinite set of inequality restrictions. Using this characterization, we devise a test that requires solving only linear programs for its implementation, and thus remains computationally feasible in the high‐dimensional applications that motivate our analysis. The asymptotic size of the proposed test is shown to equal at most the nominal level uniformly over a large class of distributions that permits the number of linear equations to grow with the sample size.
本文讨论了一个已知系数的线性方程组是否存在非负解的检验问题。这个假设检验问题自然出现在许多设置中，包括随机系数、处理效果和离散选择模型，以及一类线性规划问题。作为第一个贡献，我们获得了零假设在满足无限不等式限制集的已识别参数方面的一个新的几何特征。利用这一特性，我们设计了一种测试，它只需要求解线性程序即可实现，从而在激发我们分析的高维应用程序中保持计算上的可行性。所提出的检验的渐近大小表明，在允许线性方程的数量随样本量增长的大类别分布上，最多等于名义水平。
