Market Imperfections and Endogenous Fluctuations

We provide a methodology to study the role of distortions and market failures on endogenous fluctuations. We extend the well-known Woodford (1986) model to account for market distortions, introducing general specifications for three crucial functions: real rental cost of capital, real wage and workers offer curve. The elasticities of these three functions have a key role on local dynamics and, using them, we are able to identify the several parameters' configurations under which local indeterminacy and bifurcations occur. Most of the market imperfections considered in the related literature become particular cases of our general framework, and by comparing them we show that several types of market distortions are equivalent in terms of the local dynamics, sharing therefore the same indeterminacy mechanisms. We further provide examples of specific distortions leading to new configurations. We also found that indeterminacy, with arbitrarily small levels of distortions, require conditions similar to those founded in the standard Ramsey and OLG economies.