IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ebl/ecbull/eb-08b00001.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

A Comment On Gintis's "The Dynamics of General Equilibrium"

Author

Listed:
  • Ennio Bilancini

    (University of Siena)

  • Fabio Petri

    (University of Siena)

Abstract

Gintis (2007, 'The Dynamics of General Equilibrium'', Economic Journal 117 (523) , 1280–1309) provides an agent-based model of a Walrasian economy where the tâtonnement is replaced by imitation. His simulations show that the economy converges to the Walrasian equilibrium. Gintis concludes that 1) his stability results provide some justification for the importance placed upon the Walrasian model, and 2) models allowing agents to imitate successful others lead to an economy with a reasonable level of stability and efficiency. Since these conclusions appear to be intended as general, we caution that Gintis''s findings can only be accepted for Walrasian models without capital goods in models with capital goods imitation-based adjustments alter the equilibrium''s data (which makes the demonstration of stability impossible) and raise other important problems (absent from Gintis''s simulations) still awaiting exploration.

Suggested Citation

  • Ennio Bilancini & Fabio Petri, 2008. "A Comment On Gintis's "The Dynamics of General Equilibrium"," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 2(3), pages 1-7.
    • Handle: RePEc:ebl:ecbull:eb-08b00001
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.accessecon.com/pubs/EB/2008/Volume2/EB-08B00001A.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Fabio Petri, 2004. "General Equilibrium, Capital and Macroeconomics," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 3438.
    2. Robert Axtell, 2005. "The Complexity of Exchange," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 115(504), pages 193-210, June.
    3. Bliss, C. J., 1975. "Capital Theory and the Distribution of Income," Elsevier Monographs, Elsevier, edition 1, number 9780720436044 edited by Bliss, C. J..
    4. Herbert Gintis, 2007. "The Dynamics of General Equilibrium," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 117(523), pages 1280-1309, October.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. repec:hal:pseose:halshs-00825217 is not listed on IDEAS
    2. Fabio Petri, 2009. "On the Recent Debate on Capital Theory and General Equilibrium," Department of Economics University of Siena 568, Department of Economics, University of Siena.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. repec:ebl:ecbull:v:2:y:2008:i:3:p:1-7 is not listed on IDEAS
    2. Ennio Bilancini & Fabio Petri, 2008. "The Dynamics of General Equilibrium: A Comment on Professor Gintis," Department of Economics University of Siena 538, Department of Economics, University of Siena.
    3. Nuno Ornelas Martins, 2016. "Political aspects of the capital controversies and capitalist crises," Journal of Post Keynesian Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 39(4), pages 473-494, October.
    4. Gräbner, Claudius, 2015. "Methodology Does Matter: About Implicit Assumptions in Applied Formal Modelling. The case of Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium Models vs Agent-Based Models," MPRA Paper 63003, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    5. Edoardo Gaffeo & Mauro Gallegati & Umberto Gostoli, 2015. "An agent-based “proof of principle” for Walrasian macroeconomic theory," Computational and Mathematical Organization Theory, Springer, vol. 21(2), pages 150-183, June.
    6. Luzius Meisser & C. Friedrich Kreuser, 2017. "An Agent-Based Simulation of the Stolper–Samuelson Effect," Computational Economics, Springer;Society for Computational Economics, vol. 50(4), pages 533-547, December.
    7. Chen, Shu-Heng, 2012. "Varieties of agents in agent-based computational economics: A historical and an interdisciplinary perspective," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 36(1), pages 1-25.
    8. Gräbner, Claudius & Heinrich, Torsten & Kudic, Muhamed, 2016. "Structuration processes in complex dynamic systems - an overview and reassessment," MPRA Paper 69095, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    9. Shu-Heng Chen & Bin-Tzong Chie & Ying-Fang Kao & Ragupathy Venkatachalam, 2019. "Agent-Based Modeling of a Non-tâtonnement Process for the Scarf Economy: The Role of Learning," Computational Economics, Springer;Society for Computational Economics, vol. 54(1), pages 305-341, June.
    10. Tongkui Yu & Shu-Heng Chen, 2021. "Realizable Utility Maximization as a Mechanism for the Stability of Competitive General Equilibrium in a Scarf Economy," Computational Economics, Springer;Society for Computational Economics, vol. 58(1), pages 133-167, June.
    11. Fabio Petri, 2009. "On the Recent Debate on Capital Theory and General Equilibrium," Department of Economics University of Siena 568, Department of Economics, University of Siena.
    12. Fabio Petri, 2017. "The Passage of Time, Capital, and Investment in Traditional and in Recent Neoclassical Value Theory," Department of Economics University of Siena 750, Department of Economics, University of Siena.
    13. Ghosal, Sayantan & Porter, James, 2010. "Out-Of-Equilibrium Dynamics With Decentralized Exchange: Cautious Trading And Convergence To Efficiency," Economic Research Papers 271179, University of Warwick - Department of Economics.
    14. Ariel Dvoskin & Andr�s Lazzarini, 2013. "On Walras's Concept of Equilibrium," Review of Political Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 25(1), pages 117-138, January.
    15. Saverio M. Fratini, 2019. "On The Second Stage Of The Cambridge Capital Controversy," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 33(4), pages 1073-1093, September.
    16. Claudius Gräbner & Catherine S. E. Bale & Bernardo Alves Furtado & Brais Alvarez-Pereira & James E. Gentile & Heath Henderson & Francesca Lipari, 2019. "Getting the Best of Both Worlds? Developing Complementary Equation-Based and Agent-Based Models," Computational Economics, Springer;Society for Computational Economics, vol. 53(2), pages 763-782, February.
    17. Ghosal, Sayantan & Porter, James, 2013. "Decentralised exchange, out-of-equilibrium dynamics and convergence to efficiency," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 66(1), pages 1-21.
    18. Garbellini, Nadia, 2020. "Measurement without theory, and theory without measurement: What's wrong with Piketty's capital in the XXI century?," Structural Change and Economic Dynamics, Elsevier, vol. 52(C), pages 50-62.
    19. Klaus Jaffe, 2015. "Agent based simulations visualize Adam Smith's invisible hand by solving Friedrich Hayek's Economic Calculus," Papers 1509.04264, arXiv.org, revised Nov 2015.
    20. Da Silva, Sergio, 2009. "Does Macroeconomics Need Microeconomic Foundations?," Economics - The Open-Access, Open-Assessment E-Journal (2007-2020), Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel), vol. 3, pages 1-11.
    21. Teppo Felin & Stuart Kauffman & Roger Koppl & Giuseppe Longo, 2014. "Economic Opportunity and Evolution: Beyond Landscapes and Bounded Rationality," Post-Print hal-01415115, HAL.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • B0 - Schools of Economic Thought and Methodology - - General
    • D5 - Microeconomics - - General Equilibrium and Disequilibrium

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:ebl:ecbull:eb-08b00001. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: John P. Conley (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    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.