An overview of the Daya Bay Reactor Neutrino Experiment

The Daya Bay Reactor Neutrino Experiment discovered an unexpectedly large neutrino oscillation related to the mixing angle $\theta_{13}$ in 2012. This finding paved the way to the next generation of neutrino oscillation experiments. In this article, we review the history, featured design, and scientific results of Daya Bay. Prospects of the experiment are also described.Comment: 18 pages, 5 figures. An overview to appear in the Special Issue on neutrino oscillations of Nuclear Physics

Can a Representative-Agent Model Represent a Heterogeneous-Agent Economy?

Accounting for observed fluctuations in aggregate employment, consumption, and real wage using the optimality conditions of a representative household often requires preferences that are incompatible with economic priors (e.g., Mankiw, Rotemberg, and Summers 1985). This discrepancy between the equilibrium model and the aggregate data is often viewed as evidence of the failure of labor-market clearing. We argue that such a conclusion is premature. We construct a model economy where all prices are flexible and all markets clear at all times but household decisions are not readily aggregated because of incomplete capital markets and the indivisible nature of the labor supply. We demonstrate that if we were to explain the model-generated aggregate time series using decisions of a fictitious" stand-in household, such a household is likely to have a non-concave or unstable utility. Our analysis suggests that the representative-agent model often fails to represent an equilibrium outcome of a heterogeneous-agent economy.Representative-agent model, Aggregation, Heterogeneity, Incomplete Markets, Indivisible Labor, GMM Estimation

Can a Representative-Agent Model Represent a Heterogeneous-Agent Economy?

Accounting for observed fluctuations in aggregate employment, consumption, and real wage using the optimality conditions of a representative household requires preferences that are incompatible with economic priors. In order to reconcile theory with data, we construct a model with heterogeneous agents whose decisions are difficult to aggregate because of incomplete capital markets and the indivisible nature of labor supply. If we were to explain the model-generated aggregate time series using decisions of a stand-in household, such a household must have a non-concave or unstable utility as is often found with the aggregate U.S. data.Representative-Agent Model, Heterogeneous Agent, Macroeconomics