ECONOMETRICA 2023年第4期

ECONOMETRICA2023年第4期

JUL, 2023,VOLUME 91, ISSUE4

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Ideology and Performance in Public Organizations

意识形态与公共组织绩效

Jörg L. Spenkuch, Edoardo Teso, Guo Xu

我们将美国联邦政府从1997年至2019年的人事档案与行政选民注册数据相结合，研究政治家与官僚之间的意识形态一致对人员更替和绩效的影响。我们记录了显著的党派周期和政治任命人员的更替。相比之下，在公务员队伍中，我们没有发现政治周期。在任何时间点上，相当大比例的官僚与其政治领导在意识形态上不一致。我们以采购官员为案例研究了这种不一致对绩效的影响。我们利用总统过渡作为政治一致性的“官僚内部”变化来源，发现由不一致官员监督的采购合同出现更大的成本超支和延迟。我们提供了与一般的“士气效应”一致的证据，即不一致的官僚对追求组织使命的动机较低。因此，我们的研究结果有助于初步揭示公共组织内意识形态不一致的成本。

02

Scaling Auctions as Insurance: A Case Study in Infrastructure Procurement

将拍卖作为保险：基础设施采购的案例研究

Valentin Bolotnyy, Shoshana Vasserman

Most U.S. government spending on highways and bridges is done through “scaling” procurement auctions, in which private construction firms submit unit price bids for each piece of material required to complete a project. Using data on bridge maintenance projects undertaken by the Massachusetts Department of Transportation (MassDOT), we present evidence that firm bidding behavior in this context is consistent with optimal skewing under risk aversion: firms limit their risk exposure by placing lower unit bids on items with greater uncertainty. We estimate the amount of uncertainty in each auction, and the distribution of bidders' private costs and risk aversion. Simulating equilibrium item-level bids under counterfactual settings, we estimate the fraction of project spending that is due to risk and evaluate auction mechanisms under consideration by policymakers. We find that scaling auctions provide substantial savings relative to lump sum auctions and show how our framework can be used to evaluate alternative auction designs.

在美国，大部分公路和桥梁的政府支出都是通过“scaling”采购拍卖进行的，其中私营建筑公司为完成项目所需的每一件材料提交单位价格竞标。利用马萨诸塞州交通部（MassDOT）进行的桥梁维护项目数据，我们提供了证据表明，在这种情况下，公司的竞标行为与风险规避下的最优扭曲一致：公司通过在具有更大不确定性的项目上提出较低的单位出价来限制其风险暴露。我们估计了每次拍卖中的不确定性程度以及竞标者私人成本和风险规避的分布。通过反事实设置模拟均衡项目级别出价，我们估计了项目支出中由风险导致的比例，并评估了决策者正在考虑的拍卖机制。我们发现，与一次性拍卖相比，缩放拍卖提供了相当大的储蓄，并展示了我们的框架如何用于评估替代拍卖设计。

03

General Equilibrium Effects of (Improving) Public Employment Programs: Experimental Evidence From India

（改进的）公共就业计划的一般均衡效应：来自印度的实验证据

Karthik Muralidharan, Paul Niehaus, Sandip Sukhtankar

Public employment programs may affect poverty both directly through the income they provide and indirectly through general equilibrium effects. We estimate both effects, exploiting a reform that improved the implementation of India's National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) and whose rollout was randomized at a large (sub-district) scale. The reform raised beneficiary households' earnings by 14%, and reduced poverty by 26%. Importantly, 86% of income gains came from non-program earnings, driven by higher private-sector (real) wages and employment. This pattern appears to reflect imperfectly competitive labor markets more than productivity gains: worker's reservation wages increased, land returns fell, and employment gains were higher in villages with more concentrated landholdings. Non-agricultural enterprise counts and employment grew rapidly despite higher wages, consistent with a role for local demand in structural transformation. These results suggest that public employment programs can effectively reduce poverty in developing countries, and may also improve economic efficiency.

公共就业计划可能通过提供的收入直接影响贫困，也可能通过一般均衡效应间接影响贫困。我们估计了这两种影响，利用一项改革，该改革改善了印度国家农村就业保障计划（NREGS）的实施，其推广在大规模（次区划）范围内是随机的。该改革使受益户的收入增加了14％，贫困率降低了26％。重要的是，86％的收入增长来自非计划收入，这是由于私营部门（实际）工资和就业的提高。这种模式似乎更多地反映了劳动力市场的不完全竞争，而不是生产率的提高：工人的保留工资增加，土地收益下降，就业增长在土地集中程度更高的村庄中更高。尽管工资较高，非农业企业的数量和就业也在迅速增长，这与结构转型中的地方需求发挥了作用。这些结果表明，公共就业计划可以有效地减少发展中国家的贫困，并可能改善经济效率。

04

The Effect of Macroeconomic Uncertainty on Firm Decisions

宏观经济不确定性对企业决策的影响

Saten Kumar，Yuriy Gorodnichenko，Olivier Coibion

Using a new survey of firms in New Zealand, we document how exogenous variation in the macroeconomic uncertainty perceived by firms affects their economic decisions. We use randomized information treatments that provide different types of information about the first and/or second moments of future economic growth to generate exogenous changes in the perceived macroeconomic uncertainty of some firms. The effects on their decisions relative to their initial plans as well as relative to an untreated control group are measured in a follow-up survey six months later. We find that as firms become more uncertain, they reduce their prices, employment, and investment, their sales decline, and they become less likely to invest in new technologies or open new facilities. These ex post effects of uncertainty are similar to how firms say they would respond to higher uncertainty when asked hypothetical questions.   

利用对新西兰企业的新调查，我们记录了企业感知的宏观经济不确定性的外生变化如何影响它们的经济决策。我们使用随机信息处理，为一些企业提供关于未来经济增长的第一和/或第二时刻不同类型的信息，以生成它们感知的宏观经济不确定性的外生变化。与初始计划相比，以及与未经处理的对照组相比，六个月后的后续调查中测量了对它们决策的影响。我们发现，随着企业变得更加不确定，它们会降低价格、就业和投资，销售额下降，它们变得不太可能投资于新技术或开设新设施。这些不确定性的事后效应与企业在被问到假设性问题时所回答的对如何应对更高不确定性的方式相似。

Robust Inference on Infinite and Growing Dimensional Time‐Series Regression

无限维和增长维度时序回归的稳健推断

Abhimanyu Gupta, Myung Hwan Seo

We develop a class of tests for time-series models such as multiple regression with growing dimension, infinite-order autoregression, and nonparametric sieve regression. Examples include the Chow test and general linear restriction tests of growing rank p. Employing such increasing p asymptotics, we introduce a new scale correction to conventional test statistics, which accounts for a high-order long-run variance (HLV), which emerges as p grows with sample size. We also propose a bias correction via a null-imposed bootstrap to alleviate finite-sample bias without sacrificing power unduly. A simulation study shows the importance of robustifying testing procedures against the HLV even when p is moderate. The tests are illustrated with an application to the oil regressions in Hamilton (2003).

我们开发了一类用于时序模型的检验方法，例如带有增长维度、无限阶自回归和非参数筛选回归的多重回归。其中包括Chow检验和增长秩p的一般线性约束检验等。利用这种逐渐增大的p渐近性质，我们引入了一个新的尺度校正到传统检验统计量中，这个校正考虑了高阶长期方差（HLV），该长期方差会随着样本大小的增加而随p增大。我们还通过零假设引入了一个偏差校正的自助法，以减轻有限样本偏差而不过分牺牲功效。模拟研究显示，在p适度时，将测试程序稳健化以抵御HLV的重要性。我们用Hamilton（2003）中的油价回归应用说明了这些检验方法。

06

Dynamic Information Provision: Rewarding the Past and Guiding the Future

动态信息提供：回报过去，引导未来

Ian Ball

I study the optimal provision of information in a long-term relationship between a sender and a receiver. The sender observes a persistent, evolving state and commits to send signals over time to the receiver, who sequentially chooses public actions that affect the welfare of both players. I solve for the sender's optimal policy in closed form: the sender reports the value of the state with a delay that shrinks over time and eventually vanishes. Even when the receiver knows the current state, the sender retains leverage by threatening to conceal the future evolution of the state.

我研究了在发件人和接收人之间的长期关系中，信息的最优提供方式。发件人观察一个持久且不断演变的状态，并承诺随着时间的推移向接收人发送信号，后者顺序选择影响双方福利的公共行动。我解出了发件人的最优政策：发件人报告状态的价值，但存在随着时间的推移而逐渐缩小并最终消失的延迟。即使接收人知道当前状态，发件人仍通过威胁隐瞒未来状态的演变来保持影响力。

07

Testing Hurwicz Expected Utility

测试赫尔维兹期望效用

Han Bleichrodt, Simon Grant, Jingni Yang

古尔（Gul）和佩森多弗（Pesendorfer）在2015年提出了一个有前景的不确定性决策理论，他们称之为赫尔维兹期望效用（HEU）。HEU是α-maxmin欧几里德期望效用的一种特殊情况，允许对不确定性来源进行偏好。它与大部分有关风险和不确定性决策的现有实证证据一致。我们展示了HEU也是可操作的，可以轻松地进行测量和测试。我们通过推导出一种新的两参数概率权重函数功能形式来实现这一点，该形式很好地适应我们的数据，并在模糊感知和模糊规避之间提供了清晰的分离。在两个实验中，我们发现支持HEU的预测，即模糊规避在不确定性来源之间保持恒定，并且模糊规避和一阶风险规避之间呈正相关。

Networks, Phillips Curves, and Monetary Policy

网络、菲利普斯曲线和货币政策

Elisa Rubbo

This paper revisits the New Keynesian framework, theoretically and quantitatively, in an economy with multiple sectors and input-output linkages. Analytical expressions for the Phillips curve and welfare, derived as a function of primitives, show that the slope of all sectoral and aggregate Phillips curves is decreasing in intermediate input shares, while productivity fluctuations endogenously generate an inflation-output tradeoff—except when inflation is measured according to the novel divine coincidence index. Consistent with the theory, the divine coincidence index provides a better fit in Phillips curve regressions than consumer prices. Monetary policy can no longer achieve the first-best, resulting in a welfare loss of 2.9% of per-period GDP under the constrained-optimal policy, which increases to 3.8% when targeting consumer inflation. The constrained-optimal policy must tolerate relative price distortions across firms and sectors in order to stabilize the output gap, and it can be implemented via a Taylor rule that targets the divine coincidence index.

本文在具有多个部门和输入-产出联系的经济环境中从理论和数量的角度重新审视了新凯恩斯框架。作为基于基本要素的函数导出的菲利普斯曲线和福利的分析表达式表明，所有部门和总体菲利普斯曲线的斜率都随中间投入份额的减少而下降，而生产率波动内生地产生了通货膨胀与产出之间的权衡，除非通货膨胀是根据新的神奇巧合指数来衡量的。与理论一致，神奇巧合指数在菲利普斯曲线回归中提供了比消费者价格更好的拟合。货币政策不再能够实现最佳政策，受限最优政策下每期GDP损失为2.9％，当以消费者通胀为目标时，这一损失增加至3.8％。受限最优政策必须容忍公司和部门之间的相对价格扭曲，以稳定产出缺口，可以通过以神奇巧合指数为目标的泰勒规则来实施。

09

Growing Like India—the Unequal Effects of Service‐Led Growth

像印度一样增长- 服务引领增长的不平等效应

Tianyu Fan, Michael Peters, Fabrizio Zilibotti

Structural transformation in most currently developing countries takes the form of a rapid rise in services but limited industrialization. In this paper, we propose a new methodology to structurally estimate productivity growth in service industries that circumvents the notorious difficulties in measuring quality improvements. In our theory, the expansion of the service sector is both a consequence—due to income effects—and a cause—due to productivity growth—of the development process. We estimate the model using Indian household data. We find that productivity growth in nontradable consumer services such as retail, restaurants, or residential real estate was an important driver of structural transformation and rising living standards between 1987 and 2011. However, the welfare gains were heavily skewed toward high-income urban dwellers.

目前大多数发展中国家的结构转型采取的形式是服务业的迅速崛起，但工业化有限。在本文中，我们提出了一种新的方法来结构性地估计服务业生产率增长，从而避开了测量质量改进的困难。在我们的理论中，服务业的扩张既是发展过程的结果（由于收入效应），也是发展过程的原因（由于生产率增长）。我们使用印度家庭数据估计了该模型。我们发现，在1987年至2011年期间，非可交易的消费者服务（如零售、餐饮或住宅地产）的生产率增长是结构转型和生活水平提高的重要推动因素。然而，福利收益在很大程度上偏向高收入城市居民。

10

A Theory of Simplicity in Games and Mechanism Design

游戏和机制设计中的简洁性理论

Marek Pycia, Peter Troyan

我们研究了允许代理商仅为他们可能需要做出的一部分未来决策（即计划视野）进行规划的广泛形式游戏和机制。随着游戏的进行和新的决策点进入他们的计划视野，代理商可以更新他们所谓的战略计划。我们引入了一系列简单性标准，这些标准要求规定的行动在计划视野之外发生了什么时，都能带来明显更好的结果。我们使用这些标准来探讨简单性与其他目标之间的权衡，在广泛的经济环境中刻画简单机制，并勾勒出常见机制（如报价和升价拍卖）的简单性，前者比后者更简单。

Sequential Veto Bargaining With Incomplete Information

不完全信息下的顺序否决讨价还价

S. Nageeb Ali，Navin Kartik，Andreas Kleiner

We study extensive-form games and mechanisms allowing agents that plan for only a subset of future decisions they may be called to make (the planning horizon). Agents may update their so-called strategic plan as the game progresses and new decision points enter their planning horizon. We introduce a family of simplicity standards which require that the prescribed action leads to unambiguously better outcomes, no matter what happens outside the planning horizon. We employ these standards to explore the trade-off between simplicity and other objectives, to characterize simple mechanisms in a wide range of economic environments, and to delineate the simplicity of common mechanisms such as posted prices and ascending auctions, with the former being simpler than the latter.

我们研究了建议者和否决者之间的顺序讨价还价。两者都有单峰偏好，但建议者对否决者的理想点不确定。建议者不能承诺未来的提议。当玩家都很耐心时，可能存在具有科斯动态的平衡：否决者的私人信息可以在很大程度上抵消建议者的讨价还价权力。然而，我们的主要结论是，在某些条件下，也存在平衡，建议者可以获得他在具备承诺权时所能获得的高收益。驱动力是否决者的单峰偏好为建议者提供了一个“跳跃”的选择，即早期只与低剩余类型达成协议，以后可以可靠地从高类型中提取剩余。在方法上，我们利用了顺序讨价还价与静态机制设计之间的联系。