Standard macroeconomics, based on a reductionist approach centered on the representative agent, is badly equipped to explain the empirical evidence where heterogeneity and industrial dynamics are the rule. In this paper we show that a simple agent-based model of heterogeneous financially fragile...

This paper discusses modern macroeconomic and financial models in the light of the current crisis. Theory has been revealed to be inadequate in its explanation of the origins and the nature of the crisis, as Jean-Claude Trichet the Governor of the European Central bank and his colleagues at...

This chapter takes as its starting point the idea that any model of the economy must have heterogeneous agents. Such agents together form a complex adaptive system where the aggregate behavior emerges from the interaction between the individuals. Such systems do not lend themselves to being...

In this paper we argue that if we want to find a more satisfactory approach to tackling the major socio-economic problems we are facing, we need to thoroughly rethink the basic assumptions of macroeconomics and financial theory. Making minor modifications to the standard models to remove...

This short paper argues that rationally motivated coordination between agents is an important ingredient to understand the current economic crisis. We argue that changes in parameters that model the structure of a macro-economy or financial markets are not exogenous but arise as agents adopt...

This book analyses situations in which individual agents, who might be different from each other, interact and produce behaviour on the aggregate level which does not correspond to that of the average actor. This leads to aggregate outcomes which would be impossible to explain in a more standard...

This book is a collection of essays which examine how the properties of aggregate variables are influenced by the actions and interactions of heterogenous individuals in different economic contexts. The common denominator of the essays is a critique of the representative agent hypothesis. If...

We develop a dynamic computational network model of the banking system where fire sales provide the amplification mechanism of financial shocks. Each period a finite number of banks offers a large, but finite, number of loans to households. Banks with excess liquidity also offer loans to other...