Market imperfections and the instability of open economies

In the presence of small market imperfections, the transitional dynamics of an open economy can become indeterminate, in that there exist an infinite number of equilibrium paths converging to a unique steady state. In contrast to closed economy models, in the open economy, such indeterminacy can arise independently of the curvature of the utility function in consumption. The results suggest that with market imperfections, open economies can be subject to fluctuations caused by randomness unrelated to the economy's fundamentals.