Stationary Markovian Equilibrium in Altruistic Stochastic OLG Models with Limited Commitment
55 Pages Posted: 25 Aug 2011 Last revised: 27 Jan 2012
Date Written: August 25, 2011
Abstract
We introduce a new class of innite horizon altruistic stochastic OLG models with capital and labor, but without commitment between the generations. Under mild regularity conditions, for economies with either bounded or unbounded state spaces, continuous monotone Markov perfect Nash equilibrium (henceforth MPNE) are shown to exist, and form an antichain. Further, for each such MPNE, we can also construct a corresponding stationary Markovian equilibrium invariant distribution. We then show for many versions of our economies found in applied work in macroeconomics, unique MPNE exist relative to the space of bounded measurable functions. We also relate all of our results to those obtained by promised utility/continuation methods based upon the work of Abreu et al. (1990). As our results are constructive, we can provide characterizations of numerical methods for approximating MPNE, and we construct error bounds. Finally, we provide a series of examples to show the potential applications and limitations of our results.
Keywords: stochastic games, Markov perfect Nash equilibrium, constructive methods, commitment
JEL Classification: C62, C73, D91, 040
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation