A MACRODYNAMICS OF DEBT REGIMES, FINANCIAL INSTABILITY AND GROWTH

Abstract

It is developed a dynamic macromodel of utilization and growth of productive capacity, in which the supply of credit-money is endogenous and firms' debt position - and thus the financial fragility of the economy à la Hyman Minsky - is explicitly modeled. The rate of interest is set as a markup over the base rate, which is exogenously determined by the monetary authority. Banking markup varies with changes in economic activity, which is measured by capacity utilization, while firms' debt position varies with the rates of interest, profit and capital accumulation. Regarding dynamics, it is shown the possibility of relating the stability properties of a system with the interest rate and the debt ratio as state variables to the type of minskyan regime - hedge, speculative, Ponzi - which prevails.