IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/joecth/v21y2003i2p435-454.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Indeterminacy of equilibrium in stochastic OLG models

Author

Listed:
  • Michael Magill
  • Martine Quinzii

Abstract

This paper studies the equilibria of a stochastic OLG exchange economies consisting of identical agents living for two periods, and having the opportunity to trade a single infinitely-lived asset in constant supply. The agents have uncertain endowments and the stochastic process determining the endowments is Markovian. For such economies, the literature has focused on studying strongly stationary equilibria in which quantities and prices are functions of the exogenous states of nature which describe the uncertainty: such equilibria are generalizations of deterministic steady states, and this paper investigates if they have the same special status as asymptotic limits of other equilibrium paths. The difficulty in extending the analysis of equilibria beyond the class of strongly stationary equilibria comes from the presence of indeterminacy: we propose a procedure for overcoming this difficulty which can be decomposed into two steps. First backward induction arguments are used to restrict the domain of possible prices; then if some indeterminacy is left, expectation functions are introduced to make the forward equilibrium equations determinate. The properties of the resulting trajectories, in particular their asymptotic properties, can then be studied. For the class of models that we study this procedure provides a justification for focusing on strongly stationary equilibria. For the model with positive dividends (equity or land) the justification is complete, since we show that the strongly stationary equilibrium is the unique equilibrium. For the model with zero dividends (money) there is a continuum of self-fulfilling expectation functions resulting in a continuum of equilibrium paths starting from any admissible initial condition: under conditions given in the paper, these equilibrium paths converge almost surely to one of the strongly stationary equilibria-either autarchy or the stochastic analogue of the Golden Rule. Copyright Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2003

Suggested Citation

  • Michael Magill & Martine Quinzii, 2003. "Indeterminacy of equilibrium in stochastic OLG models," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 21(2), pages 435-454, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:joecth:v:21:y:2003:i:2:p:435-454
    DOI: 10.1007/s00199-002-0287-6
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s00199-002-0287-6
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s00199-002-0287-6?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Zhigang Feng & Matthew Hoelle, 2017. "Indeterminacy in stochastic overlapping generations models: real effects in the long run," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 63(2), pages 559-585, February.
    2. Takeoka, Norio, 2006. "Stationary Markov equilibria on a non-compact self-justified set," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 42(3), pages 269-290, June.
    3. Ohtaki, Eisei, 2014. "Tractable graphical device for analyzing stationary stochastic OLG economies," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 40(C), pages 16-26.
    4. P. Jean-Jacques Herings & Harold Houba, 2022. "Costless delay in negotiations," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 74(1), pages 69-93, July.
    5. Martin Barbie & Marten Hillebrand, 2018. "Bubbly Markov equilibria," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 66(3), pages 627-679, October.
    6. Eisei Ohtaki & Hiroyuki Ozaki, 2015. "Monetary equilibria and Knightian uncertainty," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 59(3), pages 435-459, August.
    7. Chatterji, Shurojit & Chattopadhyay, Subir, 2006. "Functional sunspot equilibria," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 42(1), pages 22-35, February.
    8. Eisei Ohtaki & Hiroyuki Ozaki, 2014. "Optimality in a Stochastic OLG Model with Ambiguity," Working Papers e069, Tokyo Center for Economic Research.
    9. Eisei Ohtaki, 2023. "Optimality in an OLG model with nonsmooth preferences," International Journal of Economic Theory, The International Society for Economic Theory, vol. 19(3), pages 611-659, September.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Keywords and Phrases: Stochastic overlapping generations model; Stationary rational expectations equilibrium; Indeterminacy; Expectation functions; Martingale convergence theorem.; JEL Classification Numbers: D50; D84; C62.;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D50 - Microeconomics - - General Equilibrium and Disequilibrium - - - General
    • D84 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Expectations; Speculations

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:joecth:v:21:y:2003:i:2:p:435-454. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.