In this paper we present the basics of a research program aimed at providing microfoundations to macroeconomic theory on the basis of computational agentbased adaptive descriptions of individual behavior. To exemplify our proposal, a simple prototype model of decentralized multi-market...

In this paper we present the basics of a research program aimed at providing microfoundations to macroeconomic theory on the basis of computational agent-based adaptive descriptions of individual behavior. To exemplify our proposal, a simple prototype model of decentralized multi-market...

Schumpeter asserted that there were two types of business cycle theories: one in which cycles reflected dampened economic behavior and another in which cycles reflect explosive economic behavior. Both of these theories allowed that cycles could be either monotonic or oscillating. In this working...

This paper describes an empirical study of the implications of agents' heterogeneity for theories of macroeconomic fluctuations based on the role of financial variables. Models of explicit distribution dynamics are applied to company account data from a panel of US manufacturing firms to...

The firmly established evidence of right-skewness of the firms’ size distribution is generally modelled recurring to some variant of the Gibrat’s Law of Proportional Effects. In spite of its empirical success, this approach has been harshly criticized on a theoretical ground due to its lack...

Power law behavior is an emerging property of many economic models. In this paper we emphasize the fact that power law distributions are persistent but not time invariant. In fact, the scale and shape of the firms' size distribution fluctuate over time. In particular, on a log–log space, both...

We explore the dynamics of default cascades in a network of credit interlinkages in which each agent is at the same time a borrower and a lender. When some counterparties of an agent default, the loss she experiences amounts to her total exposure to those counterparties. A possible conjecture in...

Hyman Minsky is renowned for his theoretical and empirical investigation of the capitalist economy. In this book, a distinguished group of contributors provides an authoritative account of his contribution to the analysis of capitalism and, more particularly, to the fields of monetary and post...

The restrictive assumptions imposed by the traditional methods of aggregation prevented so far a sound analysis of complex system of feedback between microeconomic variables and macroeconomic outcomes. This issue seems to be crucial in macroeconomic modelling, in particular for the analysis of...