The emergence of co-existing debt cycle regimes in an economic growth model

This paper aims to provide a modeling framework that keeps track of the interdependency between firms’ external financing structure and the state of the economy. Accordingly, it is based on the well‐known Kaleckian model which is combined with a modeling strategy of a sentiment index that was proposed by Franke (2012, 2014). The sentiment influences firms’ subjective sales expectations and thus their planned level of investment. As it turns out, the non‐linear model set‐up appears to be flexible in the sense that it is able to generate different interesting dynamic scenarios. It is shown that it may produce (a) sentiment‐driven business cycle fluctuations, including endogenously determined Minsky‐Koo‐kind recessions, and, more interestingly, (b) two distinct economic environments that exist contemporaneously: a ‘low‐’ and ‘high‐indebted’ regime.