This chapter introduces Agent-Based Modeling (ABM) as a research tool that possesses advantages for heterodox research programs. We introduce the approach in four steps. First, we discuss the uniqueness of ABMs, which lies primarily in the flexibility to incorporate vastly heterogeneous agents and to address models with high degrees of freedom. Second, we argue that the flexibility of ABMs make...

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 financial fragility, as conceived in the Keynesian and New Keynesian literature. In the present paper ...

We investigate the importance of trend inflation and the real-activity gap in explaining inflation in G7 countries since 1960. Our analysis is based on a bivariate unobserved components model of inflation and unemployment in which inflation is decomposed into a stochastic trend and a transitory component. As in recent implementations of the New Keynesian Phillips Curve, it is the transitory com...

The economic performances of the Eurozone look weaker than those of the United States over the period 1999-2006, in spite of the fact that the former applies more thoroughly the 'new macroeconomics' governance rules concerning public deficits and inflation control. The literature emphasizes Alan Greenspan's pragmatism when discussing the relative success of the Fed, but the reasons why pragmati...

Bennett McCallum (2009), applying Evans and Honkapohja’s (2001) results, argues that “learnability” can save New-Keynesian models from their indeterminacies. He claims the unique bounded equilibrium is learnable, and the explosive equilibria are not. However, he assumes that agents can directly observe the monetary policy shock. Reversing this assumption, I find the opposite result: the bounded...

The standard New Keynesian model suffers from the so-called .macro-micro pricing conflict: in order to match the dynamics of inflation implied by macroeconomic data, the model needs to assume an average duration of price contracts which is much longer than what is observed in micro data. Here I show how departing from the standard model’s assumption of a perfectly competitive labor market can h...

We examine solutions in which neither player is worse off from the leadership of one in a policy maker-public game. The loop model of dynamic games is used. Outcome space is dotted with equivalence classes of solutions. The Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium (DSGE) results and their New Keynesian variants might represent one category. The economy is the neighborhood of a market-clearing equ...

We develop and test a New Keynesian model of inflation dynamics based on the presence of idiosyncratic shocks to firms’ marginal costs. We show that if firms ignore economy-wide influences on their marginal costs, inflation will exhibit a greater degree of inertia than the conventional New Keynesian model suggests. Credible disinflationary policies are likely to be accompanied by recessions rat...

The Greek debt crisis opened up the policy discourse over Europe to the extent of an unprecedented extent of questioning of the original design of the Eurozone. Such a rethink requires an examination of how the European economy functions and the appropriate theoretical approach to analysing it. The purpose of this paper is to revisit the thinking behind the design of European Monetary Union and...

In the Keynesian model we thought of monetary policy as exogenous in the sense that the money supply, Mt, was set exogenously. This is useful for understanding the model but doesn’t really describe how monetary policy works in practice. In the real world, central banks adjust the money supply (and hence interest rates) endogenously in response to changing conditions. In this set of notes we dis...