Growth and Equilibrium Indeterminacy: The Role of Capital Mobility
Posted: 4 Jan 1999
Date Written: November 1998
Abstract
The paper presents a human capital driven endogenous growth model which, in general, permits a multiplicity of equilibrium balanced growth paths. It is shown that allowing for perfect capital mobility across countries increases the range of parameter values for which the model permits equilibrium indeterminacy. As opposed to the closed capital markets case, simple restrictions on preferences are no longer sufficient to eliminate the indeterminacy. Intuitively, under perfect capital mobility agents are able to smooth consumption completely. This induces an economy with open capital markets to behave like a closed economy with linear preferences thereby increasing the possibility of equilibrium indeterminacy. However, under some realistic parameter restrictions, the steady state growth rate is unambiguously higher for an open economy than a closed economy.
JEL Classification: F4, O4
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation