Marginal stability

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In the theory of dynamical systems and control theory, a linear time-invariant system is marginally stable if it is neither asymptotically stable nor unstable. Roughly speaking, a system is stable if it always returns to and stays near a particular state (called the steady state), and is unstable if it goes further and further away from any state, without being bounded. A marginal system, sometimes referred to as having neutral stability,^[1] is between these two types: when displaced, it does not return to near a common steady state, nor does it go away from where it started without limit.

Marginal stability, like instability, is a feature that control theory seeks to avoid; we wish that, when perturbed by some external force, a system will return to a desired state. This necessitates the use of appropriately designed control algorithms.

In econometrics, the presence of a unit root in observed time series, rendering them marginally stable, can lead to invalid regression results regarding effects of the independent variables upon a dependent variable, unless appropriate techniques are used to convert the system to a stable system.