In this paper we present a macroeconomic microfounded framework with heterogeneous agents – households, firms, banks – which interact through a decentralized matching process presenting common features across four markets – goods, labor, credit and deposit. We study the dynamics of the...

In the present paper we analyse the role of dividends distributed by firms and banks, highlighting the effects of their increase on financial instability and macroeconomic dynamics. During the last decades, the financialisation of nonfinancial corporations has been characterised by a shift from...

The aim of this paper is to investigate the relationship between increasing inequality and financial fragility in an agent based macroeconomic model. We analyse the effects of a non-linear relationship between wealth and consumption on the evolution of the economic system. Preliminary results...

Starting from the agent-based decentralized matching macroeconomic model proposed in Riccetti et al. (2012), we explore the effects of banking regulation on macroeconomic dynamics. In particular, we study the overall credit exposure and the lending concentration towards a single counterparty,...

We briefly describe the evolution of the global process of capitalist accumulation during the neoliberal decades, to stress the “real causes” of the current crisis. This analysis leads to the search for a radical alternative to “austerity”, that is the economic policy approach tied to an...

In this paper we explore the role of finance in the recent crisis noting that its expansion, in a context of deregulation and globalisation, has boosted financial profits and capital accumulation, but at the cost of a growing systemic instability both in the leading capitalist economy, i.e. the...

We firstly provide a brief description of the crisis episodes, from the 2007-8 "liquidity crisis" to the 2008-9 "global recession". Then, we discuss some possible interpretations of the recent evolution, focussing on diverse aspects of the crisis: from the "elements of novelty" (financial...

We present a simple stochastic model in which heterogeneous agents accumulate wealth belonging to the capitalist or the working class, with profits generated by a stochastic multiplicative process and wages by an additive one. Class selection is based on a random process depending on wealth...

A financial crisis can have important effects on the real economy. The more financially fragile are agents the more likely is the occurrence of a financial crisis. Moreover, financial contagion may have more or less severe consequences on the real economy, depending on the degree distribution of...

In our view, the causes of the crisis are tied to the political change towards a Neoliberal phase from the 1970s on: a wide process of “deregulation” – from the labour market to the globalisation of production, from the national to the international finance – has allowed a partial...