An artificial Wicksell–Keynes economy integrating short-run business cycle and long-term cumulative trend

Economists have investigated how price–wage rigidity influences macroeconomic stability. A widely accepted view asserts that increased rigidity destabilizes an economy by requiring a larger quantity adjustment. In contrast, the Old Keynesian view regards nominal rigidity as a stabilizing factor, because it reduces fluctuations in income and thus aggregate demand. To examine whether price–wage stickiness is stabilizing or destabilizing, we build an agent-based Wicksell–Keynes macroeconomic model, which is completely closed and absolutely free from any external shocks, including policy interventions. In the model, firms setting prices and wages make both employment and investment decisions under demand constraints, while a fractional-reserve banking sector sets the interest rate and provides the firms with investment funds. As investment involves a gestation period, it is conducive to overproduction, thereby causing alternate seller’s and buyer’s markets. In the baseline simulation, a stable economy emerges with short-run business cycles and long-run fluctuations. One unique feature of the economy is its remarkable resilience: When afflicted by persistent deflation, it often manages to reverse the deflationary spiral and get back on a growth track, ultimately achieving full or nearly full employment. The virtual experiments demonstrate that prices and wages must both be moderately rigid to ensure long-run stability. The key stabilizing mechanism is a recurring demand-sufficient economy, in which firms are allowed to increase employment while simultaneously cutting real wages.