Graduate teaching, Fall 2020
by Mariacristina De Nardi
Heterogenous Agent Models (HAM): Crafting, Calibration, and Estimation
HAM is a second-year graduate class on quantitative heterogeneous agents models. Its goal is to bring class participants to the frontier of research in this field and help generate ideas for research projects.
The course will start with a basic life cycle model of consumption and savings and will then turn to models in which agents face a richer set of risks and make more decisions.
These applications focus on savings and consumption, investment in health and human capital, and on couples and singles. Other topics that will be covered include wealth inequality, entrepreneurship, and more generally how risks and saving motives lead to wealth inequality.
Along the way, we will discuss how to take these model to data and calibration versus estimation methods, including the method of simulated moments. We also will critically evaluate the successes of these models, their shortcomings, and their policy implications.
Syllabus
The referee's ABC: a short guide for newish referees
Class plan and slides (to be added as they are ready)
1. A basic estimated life-cycle model of consumption and savings with income uncertainty and precautionary savings + how to structure a good abstract and introduction. Gourinchas and Parker, Econometrica 2002 + Cagetti, Journal of Business and Economic Statistics 2003 + Cagetti, American Economic Review Papers and Proceedings 2001. Slides
2. Solving and estimating a simple life cycle model using the Method of Simulated Moments. Cagetti, Journal of Business and Economic Statistics 2003 + Cagetti, American Economic Review Papers and Proceedings 2001. Slides
3. A richer estimated life-cycle model of consumption, savings, labor supply, and retirement with wage and health uncertainty. French, Review of Economic Studies 2005. Slides
4. A close up of the retirement period. Why do high-income elderly keep saving so much during retirement? How important are medical expenses in driving saving behavior over the life cycle? What is the role and value of Medicaid? De Nardi, French, and Jones, Journal of Political Economy 2010 + De Nardi, French, and Jones, American Economic Review Papers and Proceedings 2009 + De Nardi, French, and Jones, American Economic Review 2016. Slides
5. How costly is bad health and how good is good health? A much richer life-cycle model of savings, labor supply, and retirement with income, health risk, and health costs: structural estimation with the Method of Simulated Moments and what we learn from it. De Nardi, Pashchenko, and Porapakkarm, "The lifetime costs of bad heath," NBER working paper Working Paper No. 23963, 2017. Slides
6. How costly is bad health over the life cycle and how do these costs depend on publicly-provided disability insurance? Hosseini, Kopecky, and Zhao, "How Important Is Health Inequality for Lifetime Earnings Inequality?" 2020 working paper. Slides
7. A model with supply and demand of health insurance. Braun, Kopecky, and Koreshkova, "Old, frail, and uninsured: Accounting for features of the U.S. long-term care insurance market," Econometrica, 2019. Slides
8. A life cycle model with endogenous health formation and preventative and curative investment. Serdar Ozkan, "Preventive vs. Curative Medicine: A Macroeconomic Analysis of Health Care over the Life Cycle," Working paper, 2017. Slides
9. How insured are households against income fluctuations and how do they affect consumption inequality? A semi-structural estimation approach. Blundell, Pistaferri, and Preston, "Consumption inequality and partial insurance," American Economic Review 2008. Slides
10. Why does consumption fluctuate in old age and what is the role of health and income shocks? How well are old households insured against shocks? Blundell, Borella, Commault, and De Nardi "Why does consumption fluctuate in old age and how should the government insure it?" NBER working paper No. 27348, 2020. Slides
11. On the importance of being serious about the data. Hryshko and Manovskii, "Income dynamics and consumption insurance," Working paper, 2018. Slides
12. How rich are earnings and consumption dynamics? Arellano, Blundell, and Bonhomme, "Earnings and consumption dynamics: a nonlinear panel data framework," Econometrica 2017. Slides
13. Why does it matter that earnings dynamics are much richer than typically assumed in macro models with heterogeneous agents? De Nardi, Fella, and Paz-Pardo, "Nonlinear household earnings dynamics, consumption, and welfare," Journal of the European Economic Association 2020. Slides
14. Why should we model that most people are in couples? Borella, De Nardi, and Yang, "The aggregate implications of gender and marriage," The Journal of the Economics of Ageing, 2018. Slides
15. To what extent are key economic incentives and disincentives provided by the government holding back female labor supply? Borella, De Nardi, and Yang, "Are marriage-related taxes and Social Security holding back female labor supply?" NBER Working Paper 26097. Slides
16. Dynamic collective models of the household. Mazzocco (2007) and Voena (2015). Slides
17. Overview of calibrated models of wealth inequality. De Nardi and Fella, "Saving and wealth inequality," Review of Economic Dynamics, 2017. Slides
18. What is the quantitative role of the intergenerational transmission of human capital and wealth across generation in generating wealth inequality? De Nardi, "Wealth inequality and intergenerational links," Review of Economic Studies, 2004. Slides
19. What is the role of entrepreneurship in generating wealth inequality and what are its implications in terms of estate taxes? Cagetti and De Nardi, "Entrepreneurship, frictions, and wealth," Journal of Political Economy, 2006 and Cagetti and De Nardi "Estate taxation, entrepreneurship, and wealth," American Economic Review, 2009. JPE 2006 Slides and AER 2009 Slides
20. Modeling and estimating health and human capital. Attanasio, Meghir, and Nix, "Human capital development and parental investment in india," Review of Economic Studies, 2020. Slides
21. Human capital formation along the life cycle and its macro implications. Diego Daruich, "The macroeconomic consequences of early childhood investment policies." Slides
22. Rates of returns and wealth inequality. Benhabib, Bisin, and Zhu "The distribution of wealth and fiscal policy in economies with finitely lived agents." Econometrica 2011. Slides
23. Modeling and estimating the schooling, working, and occupational choices of young men. Keane and Wolpin "Career decisions of young men". Journal of Political Economy, 1997. Slides
24. What happens inside the household? Lise and Yamada "Household sharing and commitment: evidence from panel data on individual expenditures and time use". Review of Economic Studies, 2019. Slides