Financial Constraints, Endogenous Markups, and Self-fulfilling Equilibria

We show that self-fulfilling equilibria and indeterminacy can easily arise in a simple financial accelerator model with reasonable parameter calibrations and without increasing returns in production. A key feature for generating indeterminacy in our model is the countercyclical markup due to the procyclical loan to output ratio. We illustrate, via simulations, that our financial accelerator model can generate rich business cycle dynamics, including hump-shaped output in response to demand shocks as well as serial autocorrelation in output growth rates.