ECONOMETRICA 2023年第3期

ECONOMETRICA 2023年第3期

MAY, 2023,VOLUME 91, ISSUE3

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Equilibrium Effects of Pay Transparency

薪酬透明度的均衡效应

Zoë B. Cullen, Bobak Pakzad‐Hurson
The discourse around pay transparency has focused on partial equilibrium effects: how workers rectify pay inequities through informed renegotiation. We investigate how employers respond in equilibrium. We study a model of bargaining under two‐sided incomplete information. Our model predicts that transparency reduces the individual bargaining power of workers, leading to lower average wages. A key insight is that employers credibly refuse to pay high wages to any one worker to avoid costly renegotiations with others. When workers have low individual bargaining power, pay transparency has a muted effect. We test our model with an event‐study analysis of U.S. state‐level laws protecting the right of private sector workers to communicate salary information with their coworkers. Consistent with our theoretical predictions, transparency laws empirically lead wages to decline by approximately 2%, and wage declines are smallest in magnitude when workers have low individual bargaining power.

围绕薪酬透明度的讨论集中在部分均衡效应上:工人如何通过知情的重新谈判来纠正薪酬不平等。我们调查雇主如何在平衡中作出反应。研究了一个双方不完全信息下的议价模型。我们的模型预测，透明度降低了工人的个人议价能力，导致平均工资降低。一个关键的观点是，雇主拒绝向任何一名工人支付高工资，以避免与其他工人进行代价高昂的重新谈判，这是可信的。当员工的个人议价能力较低时，薪酬透明度的影响不大。我们对美国各州保护私营部门员工与同事沟通工资信息权利的法律进行了事件研究分析，以检验我们的模型。与我们的理论预测一致，透明度法在经验上导致工资下降约2%，当工人的个人议价能力较低时，工资下降的幅度最小。

Equilibrium Effects of Food Labeling Policies

食品标签政策的均衡效应

Nano Barahona, Cristóbal Otero, Sebastián Otero
We study a regulation in Chile that mandates warning labels on products whose sugar or caloric concentration exceeds certain thresholds. We show that consumers substitute from labeled to unlabeled products—a pattern mostly driven by products that consumers mistakenly believe to be healthy. On the supply side, we find substantial reformulation of products and bunching at the thresholds. We develop and estimate an equilibrium model of demand for food and firms' pricing and nutritional choices. We find that food labels increase consumer welfare by 1.8% of total expenditure, and that these effects are enhanced by firms' responses. We then use the model to study alternative policy designs. Under optimal policy thresholds, food labels and sugar taxes generate similar gains in consumer welfare, but food labels benefit the poor relatively more.

我们研究了智利的一项法规，该法规要求在糖或热量浓度超过一定阈值的产品上贴上警告标签。我们表明，消费者从有标签的产品转向无标签的产品——这种模式主要是由消费者错误地认为是健康的产品驱动的。在供给方面，我们发现了产品的大量重组和阈值的聚集。我们开发并估计了食品需求和企业定价和营养选择的均衡模型。我们发现，食品标签使消费者福利增加了总支出的1.8%，而这些效应因企业的反应而增强。然后，我们使用该模型来研究备选政策设计。在最优政策阈值下，食品标签和糖税在消费者福利方面产生类似的收益，但食品标签对穷人的好处相对更多。

Financial Frictions and the Wealth Distribution

金融摩擦与财富分配

Jesús Fernández‐Villaverde, Samuel Hurtado, Galo Nuño
We postulate a continuous‐time heterogeneous agent model with a financial sector and households to study the nonlinear linkages between aggregate and financial variables. In our model, the interaction between the supply of bonds by the financial sector and the precautionary demand for bonds by households produces significantendogenous aggregate risk. This risk makes the economy transition between a high‐leverage region and a low‐leverage region, which, in turn, creates state dependence in impulse responses: the same shock starting from the high‐leverage region gets propagated and amplified more than when the shock arrives when leverage is low. State dependence in impulse responses generates a time‐varying aggregate precautionary savings motive that, by moving the risk‐free rate, justifies the leverage level of the financial sector in each region. Finally, we illustrate the usefulness of neutral networks to solve for the nonlinear perceived law of motion of the model, and the importance of household heterogeneity in driving its quantitative properties.

我们假设一个连续时间的具有金融部门和家庭的异构代理模型来研究总量变量和金融变量之间的非线性联系。在我们的模型中，金融部门的债券供给与家庭对债券的预防性需求之间的相互作用产生了显著的内生总风险。这种风险使得经济在高杠杆地区和低杠杆地区之间转换，这反过来又在脉冲响应中产生状态依赖:与杠杆低时的冲击相比，从高杠杆地区开始的相同冲击得到传播和放大。脉冲响应中的国家依赖性产生了时变的总体预防性储蓄动机，通过移动无风险利率，证明了每个地区金融部门的杠杆水平是合理的。最后，我们说明了中性网络在解决模型的非线性感知运动规律方面的有用性，以及家庭异质性在驱动其定量特性方面的重要性。

Searching for Job Security and the Consequences of Job Loss

寻找工作保障和失业的后果

Gregor Jarosch
Job loss comes with large present value earnings losses which elude workhorse models of unemployment and labor market policy. I propose a parsimonious model of a frictional labor market in which jobs differ in terms of unemployment risk and workers search off‐ and on‐the‐job. This gives rise to a job ladder with slippery bottom rungs where unemployment spells beget unemployment spells. I allow for human capital to respond to time spent out of work and estimate the framework on German Social Security data. The model captures the joint response of wages, employment, and unemployment risk to job loss which I measure empirically. The key driver of the “unemployment scar” is the loss in job security and its interaction with the evolution of human capital and, in particular, the search for better employment.

失业伴随着大量的现值收入损失，这是失业和劳动力市场政策的主力模型所无法做到的。我提出了一个摩擦劳动力市场的简约模型，在这个模型中，工作在失业风险方面是不同的，工人在工作之外和工作中寻找工作。这就产生了一个底部很滑的工作阶梯，失业期会引发失业期。我允许人力资本对失业时间做出反应，并根据德国社会保障数据估计框架。该模型捕捉了工资、就业和失业风险对失业的共同反应，我对此进行了实证测量。“失业伤疤”的关键驱动因素是工作保障的丧失及其与人力资本演变的相互作用，特别是与寻找更好就业的相互作用。

A Sieve-SMM Estimator for Dynamic Models

动态模型的Sieve - smm估计

Jean‐Jacques Forneron
This paper proposes a Sieve Simulated Method of Moments (Sieve‐SMM) estimator for the parameters and the distribution of the shocks in nonlinear dynamic models where the likelihood and the moments are not tractable. An important concern with SMM, which matches sample with simulated moments, is that a parametric distribution is required. However, economic quantities that depend on this distribution, such as welfare and asset prices, can be sensitive to misspecification. The Sieve‐SMM estimator addresses this issue by flexibly approximating the distribution of the shocks with a Gaussian and tails mixture sieve. The asymptotic framework provides consistency, rate of convergence, and asymptotic normality results, extending existing results to a new framework with more general dynamics and latent variables. An application to asset pricing in a production economy shows a large decline in the estimates of relative risk aversion, highlighting the empirical relevance of misspecification bias.

本文针对似然和矩不可处理的非线性动力模型中冲击的参数和分布，提出了一种筛模拟矩法(Sieve‐SMM)估计方法。SMM的一个重要问题是，它将样本与模拟矩相匹配，需要一个参数分布。然而，依赖于这种分配的经济数量，如福利和资产价格，可能对错误规范很敏感。筛- SMM估计器通过灵活地近似高斯和尾混合筛的冲击分布来解决这个问题。渐近框架提供一致性、收敛速度和渐近正态性结果，将现有结果扩展到具有更一般动态和潜在变量的新框架。对生产经济中资产定价的应用表明，相对风险厌恶的估计大幅下降，突出了错误规范偏差的经验相关性。

Decomposing the Growth of Top Wealth Shares

分解最高财富份额的增长

Matthieu Gomez
What drives the dynamics of top wealth inequality? To answer this question, I propose an accounting framework that decomposes the growth of the share of aggregate wealth owned by a top percentile into three terms: awithin term, which is the average wealth growth of individuals initially in the top percentile relative to the economy; a between term, which accounts for individuals entering and exiting the top percentile due to changes in their relative wealth rankings; and a demography term, which accounts for individuals entering or exiting the top percentile due to death and population growth. I obtain closed‐form expressions for each term in a wide range of random growth models. Evidence from the Forbes 400 list suggests that the between term accounts for half of the recent rise in top wealth inequality.

是什么导致了贫富差距拉大?为了回答这个问题，我提出了一个会计框架，该框架将最高百分位数所拥有的总财富份额的增长分解为三个术语:内术语，即最初处于最高百分位数的个人相对于经济的平均财富增长;一个介于两者之间的术语，指的是由于相对财富排名的变化而进入和退出前百分位的个人;还有一个人口统计学术语，它解释了由于死亡和人口增长而进入或退出前百分位数的个人。我得到了各种随机增长模型中每一项的封闭形式表达式。《福布斯》(Forbes) 400富豪榜的证据表明，在近期贫富差距加剧的原因中，“介于两者之间”占了一半。

Relational Contracts: Public versus Private Savings

关系契约:公共储蓄与私人储蓄

Francesc Dilmé, Daniel F. Garrett
Work on relational employment agreements often predicts low payments or termination for poor performance. The possibility of saving can, however, limit the effectiveness of monetary incentives in motivating an employee with diminishing marginal utility for consumption. We study the role of savings and their observability in optimal relational contracts. We focus on the case where players are not too patient, and hence the constant first‐best effort cannot be implemented. If savings are hidden, the relationship eventually deteriorates over time. In particular, both payments and effort decline. On the other hand, if savings are public, consumption is initially high, so the agent's savings fall over time, and effort and payments to the agent increase. The findings thus suggest how tacit agreements on consumption can forestall the deterioration of dynamic relationships in which the agent can save.

关系型雇佣协议通常预示着低工资或因表现不佳而被解雇。然而，储蓄的可能性会限制货币激励在激励边际效用递减的雇员进行消费方面的有效性。研究了最优关系契约中储蓄的作用及其可观察性。我们关注的是玩家不太有耐心的情况，因此持续的第一最佳努力无法实现。如果储蓄被隐藏起来，这种关系最终会随着时间的推移而恶化。特别是，报酬和努力都会下降。另一方面，如果储蓄是公共的，消费一开始就很高，因此代理的储蓄会随着时间的推移而下降，而付出的努力和支付给代理的费用会增加。因此，研究结果表明，关于消费的默契如何能够防止代理人可以储蓄的动态关系的恶化。

Pareto-improving tax reforms and the Earned Income Tax Credit

帕累托改进税收改革和劳动所得税抵免

Felix J. Bierbrauer, Pierre C. Boyer, Emanuel Hansen
We develop a new approach for the identification of Pareto‐improving tax reforms. This approach yields necessary and sufficient conditions for the existence of Pareto‐improving reform directions. A main insight is that “Two brackets are enough”: When the system cannot be improved by altering tax rates in one or two income brackets, then there is no continuous reform direction that is Pareto‐improving. We also show how to check whether a given tax reform is Pareto‐improving. We use these tools to study the introduction of the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) in the United States in 1975. A robust finding is that, prior to the EITC, the U.S. tax‐transfer system was not Pareto‐efficient. Under plausible assumptions about behavioral responses, the 1975 reform was not Pareto‐improving. Qualitatively, though, it had the right properties: A similar reform with earnings subsidies made available to a broader range of incomes would have been Pareto‐improving.

我们开发了一种新的方法来识别帕累托改进税制改革。该方法给出了帕累托改进改革方向存在的充分必要条件。一个主要的观点是“两个等级就足够了”:当系统不能通过改变一个或两个收入等级的税率来改善时，那么就没有帕累托改进的持续改革方向。我们还展示了如何检查给定的税收改革是否具有帕累托改善性。我们使用这些工具来研究1975年美国引入的劳动所得税抵免(EITC)。一个强有力的发现是，在EITC之前，美国的税收转移系统不是帕累托有效的。在行为反应的合理假设下，1975年的改革并不是帕累托改进。然而，从质量上讲，它有正确的属性:一个类似的改革，将收入补贴提供给更大范围的收入，将是帕累托改进。

Distributional Synthetic Controls

分布式综合控制

F. F. Gunsilius
The method of synthetic controls is a fundamental tool for evaluating causal effects of policy changes in settings with observational data. In many settings where it is applicable, researchers want to identify causal effects of policy changes on a treated unit at an aggregate level while having access to data at a finer granularity. This article proposes an extension of the synthetic controls estimator that takes advantage of this additional structure and provides nonparametric estimates of the heterogeneity within the aggregate unit. The idea is to replicate the quantile function associated with the treated unit by a weighted average of quantile functions of the control units. This estimator relies on the same mathematical theory as the changes‐in‐changes estimator and can be applied in both repeated cross‐sections and panel data with as little as a single pre‐treatment period. It also provides a unique counterfactual quantile function for any type of distribution.

综合控制方法是利用观测数据评估政策变化因果效应的基本工具。在许多适用的情况下，研究人员希望在获得更细粒度的数据的同时，在总体水平上确定政策变化对处理单元的因果影响。本文提出了综合控制估计器的扩展，它利用了这种额外的结构，并提供了聚合单元内异质性的非参数估计。这个想法是通过控制单元的分位数函数的加权平均值来复制与处理单元相关的分位数函数。该估计器依赖于与变化中的变化估计器相同的数学理论，可以应用于重复的横截面和面板数据，只需一个预处理周期。它还为任何类型的分布提供了一个独特的反事实分位数函数。

Unemployment and Endogenous Reallocation over the Business Cycle

经济周期中的失业和内生再分配

Carlos Carrillo‐Tudela, Ludo Visschers
This paper studies the extent to which the cyclicality of occupational mobility shapes that of aggregate unemployment and its duration distribution. We document the relation between workers' occupational mobility and unemployment duration over the long run and business cycle. To interpret this evidence, we develop a multisector business cycle model with heterogenous agents. The model is quantitatively consistent with several important features of the US labor market: procyclical gross and countercyclical net occupational mobility, the large volatility of unemployment and the cyclical properties of the unemployment duration distribution, among many others. Our analysis shows that occupational mobility due to workers' changing career prospects, and not occupation‐wide differences, interacts with aggregate conditions to drive the fluctuations of the unemployment duration distribution, and the aggregate unemployment rate.

本文研究了职业流动的周期性对总失业及其持续时间分布的影响程度。我们记录了工人的职业流动性与长期失业持续时间和经济周期之间的关系。为了解释这一证据，我们开发了一个具有异质代理的多部门商业周期模型。该模型在数量上与美国劳动力市场的几个重要特征相一致:顺周期总净职业流动性和逆周期净职业流动性、失业率的巨大波动性和失业持续时间分布的周期性特征，以及其他许多特征。我们的分析表明，由于工人职业前景的变化而引起的职业流动性，而不是职业范围的差异，与总体条件相互作用，驱动失业持续时间分布和总失业率的波动。