In this chapter, we outline the reasons why economics has been concerned with non-linear dynamics, with a particular focus on business cycles and on economic growth. Using varying perspectives, we discuss the salient historical mathematical approaches to the problem and the results that were...

In this chapter, we describe growth and cycles in economics as a struggle between capitalists and workers. We first present the Phillips curve (which statistically relates unemployment with the rate of change of nominal wages) and then the Goodwin model. The latter reinterprets, in economical...

As mentioned in the Introduction, Sect. 1.2, the objective of this book is twofold: to provide a personal specification of a business cycle model within the Kaldor-Kalecki framework (see Chap. 16) and to choose a chaotic specification of the Harrod model (Sportelli and Celi (Metroeconomica...

After having illustrated in Chap. 13 the Harrod’s model and a chaotic specification of it, in this Chapter we are going to prove that (1) real data could be obtained by a suitable calibration of model’s parameters, (2) the calibrated model confirms theoretical predictions (Orlando and Della...