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Review of Economic Studies Vol. 60 No. 4 1993

Strategic Complementarity in Business Formation: Aggregate Fluctuations and Sunspot Equilibria

S. Chatterjee1; R. Cooper2; B. Ravikumar3

1 Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia · 2 Boston University · 3 University of Virginia

Abstract

The possibility of sunspot equilibria and endogenous cycles are explored in a two-sector overlapping-generations model with entry. It is shown that if prospective entrants act oligopolistically as producers but competitively as consumers then a strategic complementarity between the entry decisions of agents across sectors and across time may arise. If the complementarity is sufficiently strong, the economy will have multiple, Pareto-ranked steady states. Stationary sunspot equilibria can then be constructed as a randomization between allocations in the neighbourhood of the multiple steady states providing a source of aggregate fluctuations.

DOI
10.2307/2298100
Volume
60
Issue
4
Pages
795-811
Language
en
Sources
bibtex:phds-export.bib openalex crossref

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