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Recursive equilibria in an Aiyagari style economy with permanent income shocks

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  • Kuhn, Moritz

Abstract

In this paper, we prove the existence of a recursive competitive equilibrium (RCE) for an Aiyagari style economy with permanent income shocks and perpetual youth structure. We show that there exist equilibria where borrowing constraints are never binding. This allows us to establish a non-trivial lower bound on the equilibrium interest rate. To solve the individual’s problem, we present a new approach that uses lattices of consumption functions to deal with the non-compact state space and the unbounded utility function. The approach uses only the first order conditions of the problem (Euler equations). The proof is constructive and it serves as a theoretical foundation for the convergence of a policy function iteration procedure.

Suggested Citation

  • Kuhn, Moritz, 2008. "Recursive equilibria in an Aiyagari style economy with permanent income shocks," MPRA Paper 32323, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 09 Dec 2009.
    • Handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:32323
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    Cited by:

    1. Marcello D'Amato & Christian Di Pietro & Marco M. Sorge, 2023. "Left and Right: A Tale of Two Tails of the Wealth Distribution," CSEF Working Papers 691, Centre for Studies in Economics and Finance (CSEF), University of Naples, Italy.
    2. Ruitu Xu & Yifei Min & Tianhao Wang & Zhaoran Wang & Michael I. Jordan & Zhuoran Yang, 2023. "Finding Regularized Competitive Equilibria of Heterogeneous Agent Macroeconomic Models with Reinforcement Learning," Papers 2303.04833, arXiv.org.
    3. Moritz Kuhn & Gašper Ploj, 2020. "Job Stability, Earnings Dynamics, and Life-Cycle Savings," CESifo Working Paper Series 8710, CESifo.
    4. Ma, Qingyin & Stachurski, John & Toda, Alexis Akira, 2022. "Unbounded dynamic programming via the Q-transform," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 100(C).

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Permanent income shocks; incomplete markets; dynamic general equilibrium; heterogeneous agents;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D52 - Microeconomics - - General Equilibrium and Disequilibrium - - - Incomplete Markets
    • D51 - Microeconomics - - General Equilibrium and Disequilibrium - - - Exchange and Production Economies
    • E21 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Consumption; Saving; Wealth

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