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Schmitt-Grohe and Uribe (1997) demonstrate that a balanced-budget fiscal policy can induce aggregate instability unrelated to economic fundamentals. The empirical relevance of this result has been challenged by subsequent studies. In this paper we show, both analytically and numerically, that such extrinsic instability is an empirically robust plausibility associated with a balanced-budget rule once endogenous capital utilization is taken into consideration. This suggests that the design or operation of a balanced-budget fiscal policy must recognize that it may constitute a practical source of self-fulfilling prophecies and belief-driven fluctuations.

In a closed economy setting a cash-in-advance monetary economy under money growth targeting is prone to self-fulfilling expectations and beliefs-driven fluctuations. This paper shows that such extrinsic instability is less of a problem in a small open economy integrated in the world goods and financial markets. This is because endogenous terms-of-trade movements associated with global goods trade and cross-border capital flows and endogenous international asset price adjustments associated with global financial transaction serve as an endogenous stabilizer to reduce the likelihood of sunspot equilibria. We find that for empirically reasonable parametrization of the small open economy sunspot beliefs are unlikely to become self-fulfilled.

This paper generalizes the theoretical model of Aghion et al. (2012) to re-examine the cyclicality of R&D investment with credit constraint and linear production with different innovation capabilities. In contrast to their procyclical conclusion, we show that the R&D investment can be acyclical, procyclical, or countercyclical depending on the innovation capability, the tightness of credit constraint and the level of an entrepreneur‘s wealth.

In a small open economy facing a perfect world capital market, this paper shows that if the government follows a balanced-budget fiscal policy based on endogenous consumption tax rates, then the steady state is saddle-path stable and hence beliefs-driven aggregate instability can be ruled out. This result is in contrast to those obtained in some closed economy models, and it suggests that unrestricted world capital mobility can help stabilize the economy under the balanced-budget fiscal policy based on consumption taxation.

This paper examines the relation between aggregate elasticity of substitution (AES) and capital accumulation (the AES-K relation) in a general multi-sector Solow growth model with all CES production technologies. There are two intermediate goods produced by capital and labor, while the final good is produced by combining the two intermediate goods. When capital is sector-specific, then it is found that a positive AES-K relation emerges ony if the elasticity of substitution (ES) between capital and labor is of the same sign as the ES between the inter-mediate goods, but with the latter having a larger magnitude as required by the restriction of capital-skill complementarity. We also introduce the concepts of "global" versus "local" AES-capital relation and highlight that the AES findings of the existing literature are local ones. The general conclusion of our analysis is that capital mobility is an important factor for the likelihood of a positive AES-K relation.

We show that, with endogenous investment, virtually all monetary policy rules that set a nominal interest rate in response solely to expected future inflation induce real indeterminacy in models with (i) staggered prices, (ii) staggered prices and staggered wages, and (iii) staggered prices, staggered wages, and firm-specific capital. In (i), policy's response to current output can help significantly in ensuring determinacy with an infinite labor supply elasticity, but little with empirically plausible labor supply elasticity. In (ii), responding to output always helps a great deal, though under low price stickiness and without capital adjustment cost it may call for a moderate response to output in order to ensure determinacy for a wide range of response to inflation. In (iii), even a tiny response to output can always render equilibrium determinate for a wide range of response to inflation.