IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cai/reofsp/reof_124_0015.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Can Artificial Economies Help us Understand Real Economies?

Author

Listed:
  • Alan Kirman

Abstract

This paper argues that the path followed by modern macroeconomic theory excludes the analysis of major endogenous movements in macroeconomic variables. Rather than persist with models based on the idea that the economy behaves like a rational individual we should build models of the economy as a complex system of interacting agents. Profiting from the advances made in computer science we can now build agent based or computational models which allow us to model the out of equilibrium behaviour of such systems. They allow us to remove many of the restrictive assumptions of standard models and to incorporate the heterogeneity of economic agents and the evolution of the network that governs the interactions between the individuals and firms in the economy. Such models can help fill the theoretical void with which policymakers declare that they have been faced in the current crisis.

Suggested Citation

  • Alan Kirman, 2012. "Can Artificial Economies Help us Understand Real Economies?," Revue de l'OFCE, Presses de Sciences-Po, vol. 0(5), pages 15-41.
    • Handle: RePEc:cai:reofsp:reof_124_0015
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.cairn.info/load_pdf.php?ID_ARTICLE=REOF_124_0015
    Download Restriction: free
    File URL: http://www.cairn.info/revue-de-l-ofce-2012-5-page-15.htm
    Download Restriction: free
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Jean-Luc Gaffard & Mauro Napoletano, 2012. "Improving the toolbox. New advances in Agent-based and Computational Models," Revue de l'OFCE, Presses de Sciences-Po, vol. 0(5), pages 7-13.
    2. D. Sornette, 2014. "Physics and Financial Economics (1776-2014): Puzzles, Ising and Agent-Based models," Papers 1404.0243, arXiv.org.
    3. Didier SORNETTE, 2014. "Physics and Financial Economics (1776-2014): Puzzles, Ising and Agent-Based Models," Swiss Finance Institute Research Paper Series 14-25, Swiss Finance Institute.
    4. Jean-Luc Gaffard & Mauro Napoletano, 2012. "Introduction - Improving the Toolbox: New Advances in Agent-Based and Computational Models," Post-Print hal-01053562, HAL.
    5. Rebecca Westphal & Didier Sornette, 2020. "How market intervention can prevent bubbles and crashes," Swiss Finance Institute Research Paper Series 20-74, Swiss Finance Institute.
    6. Simone Landini & Mauro Gallegati & Joseph Stiglitz, 2015. "Economies with heterogeneous interacting learning agents," Journal of Economic Interaction and Coordination, Springer;Society for Economic Science with Heterogeneous Interacting Agents, vol. 10(1), pages 91-118, April.
    7. Rebecca Westphal & Didier Sornette, 2019. "Market Impact and Performance of Arbitrageurs of Financial Bubbles in An Agent-Based Model," Swiss Finance Institute Research Paper Series 19-29, Swiss Finance Institute.
    8. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/53r60a8s3kup1vc9l564k4686 is not listed on IDEAS
    9. Westphal, Rebecca & Sornette, Didier, 2020. "Market impact and performance of arbitrageurs of financial bubbles in an agent-based model," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 171(C), pages 1-23.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cai:reofsp:reof_124_0015. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Jean-Baptiste de Vathaire (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cairn.info/revue-de-l-ofce.htm .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.