Imperfections in the credit market can hamper the flow of factors from less productive to more productive firms and result in a lower aggregate total factor productivity (TFP). Depth of such misallocation will depend on per capita income, the level of imperfections in the credit market, and the distribution of entrepreneurial productivity. Under some parameter configurations, we find that per capita income and TFP may affect each other so that an economic boom may cause higher resource misallocation, lower TFP, and economic recession. At the same time, an economic recession may have a “cleansing effect” on TFP leading to a lower resource misallocation, higher TFP, and economic boom. In other words, economic success may breed the failure and the failure can become a precondition for success so that the boom-bust cycles in resource misallocation, TFP, and per capita income may become endogenous.

This article aims at studying a general equilibrium model with overlapping generations that incorporates inherited tastes (aspirations) and endogenous longevity. The existence of standard-of-living aspirations transmitted between two subsequent generations in a context where the individual state of health depends on public investments in health has some remarkable consequences at the macroeconomic level. First, aspirations allow escaping from the well-known poverty trap scenario described by Chakraborty (2004). Second, the steady-state equilibrium may be destabilized through a super-critical Neimark–Sacker bifurcation when the health tax rate is set at too high or too low a level. This causes endogenous fluctuations in income and longevity.

We consider an overlapping-generations economy with two consumption goods. There are two sectors that produce a pure consumption good and a mixed good that can be either consumed or used as capital. We prove that the existence of Pareto-optimal expectations-driven fluctuations is compatible with standard sectoral technologies if the share of the pure consumption good is low enough. Following Reichlin's [Journal of Economic Theory 40 (1986), 89–102] influential conclusion, this result suggests that some fiscal policy rules can prevent business-cycle fluctuations in the economy by driving it to the optimal steady state as soon as they are announced.

In past years, imperfect competition has been introduced in several dynamic models to show how markup variability, increasing returns (decreasing marginal cost), and monopoly profits affect the occurrence of endogenous fluctuations. In this paper, we focus on another possible feature of imperfectly competitive economies: consumers' taste for variety as a result of endogenous product diversity. Introducing monopolistic competition [Dixit and Stiglitz (1977), Benassy (1996)] in an overlapping generations model in which consumers have taste for variety, we show that local indeterminacy can occur under the three following conditions: a high substitution between capital and labor, increasing returns arbitrarily small, and a not too elastic labor supply. The key mechanism for this result is based on the fact that, because of taste for variety, the aggregate price decreases with the procyclical product diversity, which has a direct influence on the real wage and the real interest rate.

We study the influence of wage differential on the emergence of endogenous fluctuations. In this way, we introduce a dual labor market, based on the Shapiro–Stiglitz efficiency wage theory in an overlapping generations model. We show that wage inequality is a source of endogenous fluctuations. Indeed, a sufficiently strong wage differential leads to the occurrence of cycles of period 2 and local indeterminacy. Moreover, in contrast to several existing contributions, these results depend neither on increasing returns to scale nor on the degree of capital–labor substitution.

Nous étudions l'émergence de fluctuations endogènes dans un modèle à générations imbriquées dans lequel les producteurs se livrent une concurrence à la Cournot avec libre entrée. L'économie est caractérisée par un taux de marge variable et des rendements croissants. Nous analysons l'influence de la variabilité du taux de marge et du niveau des rendements croissants sur l'indétermination locale de l'équilibre stationnaire et l'existence de cycles endogènes. Nous montrons que des fluctuations endogènes stochastiques et déterministes peuvent émerger si les rendements sont faiblement croissants et sont proches des rendements constants. Par ailleurs, de telles fluctuations peuvent apparaître lorsque la demande de travail est décroissante et a une pente inférieure à celle de l'offre de travail.

We investigate the dynamics of an integrated Keynesian disequilibrium model of monetary growth that allows for a variety of labor-market and employment-adjustment processes. The structure of the model is naturally nonlinear, i.e., no extrinsic nonlinear economic behavioral relationships are imposed at first. The dynamics of the model are nine-dimensional and are investigated analytically by considering appropriate subdynamics. The model generates limit cycles (via Hopf bifurcations) and more complex dynamic behavior (when a natural kink in the money-wage Phillips curve is taken into account). It exhibits hysteresis effects with respect to long-run unemployment as well as growth and implies the occurrence of steady-state depressions in particular.