Agency business cycles

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Golosov, Mikhail; Menzio, Guido
• 署名单位: University of Chicago; National Bureau of Economic Research; New York University
• 刊物名称: THEORETICAL ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 1933-6837
• DOI: 10.3982/TE3379
• 发表日期: 2020-01-01
• 页码: 123-158
• 关键词: Endogenous and stochastic cycles; coordinated randomization; unemployment fluctuations

摘要

We develop a theory of endogenous and stochastic fluctuations in economic activity. Individual firms choose to randomize over firing or keeping workers who performed poorly in the past to give them an ex ante incentive to exert effort. Different firms choose to correlate the outcome of their randomization to reduce the probability with which they fire nonperforming workers. Correlated randomization leads to aggregate fluctuations. Aggregate fluctuations are endogenous-they emerge because firms choose to randomize and they choose to randomize in a correlated fashion-and they are stochastic-they are the manifestation of a randomization process. The hallmark of a theory of endogenous and stochastic fluctuations is that the stochastic process for aggregate shocks is an equilibrium object.