Indeterminacy of intertemporal equilibria under imperfect competition
Author(s) -
Leo Kaas
Publication year - 2001
Publication title -
economic theory
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.572
H-Index - 58
eISSN - 1432-0479
pISSN - 0938-2259
DOI - 10.1007/pl00004105
Subject(s) - economics , indeterminacy (philosophy) , mathematical economics , competitive equilibrium , arbitrariness , imperfect , imperfect competition , microeconomics , linguistics , philosophy , physics , quantum mechanics
Summary. It is known that overlapping generations models with imperfectly competitive firms may exhibit a continuum of stationary equilibria. The reason of this indeterminacy is that different price expectation functions of consumers lead to different objective demand functions against which firms maximize. All these expectation functions fulfill perfect foresight in the equilibrium, but they can be arbitrary off the equilibrium. In this paper it is shown that it is not this arbitrariness which is responsible for the indeterminacy, but that the continuum of stationary equilibria emerges even if expectation functions are rational.
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