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Within a macroeconomic disequilibrium model it turns out that stationary and simple adaptive policies are not capable of stabilizing efficient steady states and lead to periodic or irregular fluctuations for large sets of policy parameters. The application of recent control methods for chaotic dynamical systems shows that the government can, in principle, stabilize an unstable Walrasian equilibrium in a short time by varying income tax rates or government expenditures. Different stabilizing policies are analyzed and compared with regard to their efficiency.

This paper extends Goodwin’s growth cycle model by assuming both differential savings propensities and disequilibrium in the goods market. It is shown that both modifications entail an increase in the dimensionality of the dynamical system of the model. By applying the existence part of the Hopf bifurcation theorem, the possibility of persistent and bounded cyclical paths for the resulting 4-dimensional dynamical system is then established. With the help of numerical simulation some evidence is finally given that the limit cycle emerging from the Hopf bifurcation is stable.