IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/zbw/ifweej/7604.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Implicit Microfoundations for Macroeconomics

Author

Listed:
  • Wright, Ian

Abstract

A large market economy has a huge number of degrees of freedom with weak microlevel coordination. The 'implicit microfoundations' approach considers this property of micro-level interactions to more strongly determine macro-level outcomes compared to the precise details of individual choice behavior; that is, the 'particle' nature of individuals dominates their 'mechanical' nature. So rather than taking an 'explicit microfoundations' approach, in which individuals are represented as 'white-box' sources of fully-specified optimizing behavior ('rational agents'), we instead represent individuals as 'black box' sources of unpredictable noise subject to objective constraints ('zero-intelligence agents'). To illustrate the potential of the approach we examine a parsimonious, agent-based macroeconomic model with implicit microfoundations. It generates many of the reported empirical distributions of capitalist economies, including the distribution of income, firm sizes, firm growth, GDP and recessions.

Suggested Citation

  • Wright, Ian, 2009. "Implicit Microfoundations for Macroeconomics," Economics - The Open-Access, Open-Assessment E-Journal (2007-2020), Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel), vol. 3, pages 1-27.
    • Handle: RePEc:zbw:ifweej:7604
    DOI: 10.5018/economics-ejournal.ja.2009-19
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.5018/economics-ejournal.ja.2009-19
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/27538/1/economics_2009-19.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.5018/economics-ejournal.ja.2009-19?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Fujiwara, Yoshi, 2004. "Zipf law in firms bankruptcy," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 337(1), pages 219-230.
    2. Masanao Aoki & Hiroshi Yoshikawa, 2012. "Non-self-averaging in macroeconomic models: a criticism of modern micro-founded macroeconomics," Journal of Economic Interaction and Coordination, Springer;Society for Economic Science with Heterogeneous Interacting Agents, vol. 7(1), pages 1-22, May.
    3. Dongfeng Fu & Fabio Pammolli & S. V. Buldyrev & Massimo Riccaboni & Kaushik Matia & Kazuko Yamasaki & H. E. Stanley, 2005. "The Growth of Business Firms: Theoretical Framework and Empirical Evidence," Papers physics/0512005, arXiv.org.
    4. Ian Wright, 2004. "A conjecture on the distribution of firm profit," Papers cond-mat/0407687, arXiv.org, revised Mar 2011.
    5. Levy, Moshe & Solomon, Sorin, 1997. "New evidence for the power-law distribution of wealth," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 242(1), pages 90-94.
    6. Reed, William J., 2001. "The Pareto, Zipf and other power laws," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 74(1), pages 15-19, December.
    7. Foley Duncan K., 1994. "A Statistical Equilibrium Theory of Markets," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 62(2), pages 321-345, April.
    8. Kydland, Finn E & Prescott, Edward C, 1982. "Time to Build and Aggregate Fluctuations," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 50(6), pages 1345-1370, November.
    9. Ausloos, Marcel & Miśkiewicz, Janusz & Sanglier, Michèle, 2004. "The durations of recession and prosperity: does their distribution follow a power or an exponential law?," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 339(3), pages 548-558.
    10. Fujiwara, Yoshi & Di Guilmi, Corrado & Aoyama, Hideaki & Gallegati, Mauro & Souma, Wataru, 2004. "Do Pareto–Zipf and Gibrat laws hold true? An analysis with European firms," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 335(1), pages 197-216.
    11. Giulio Bottazzi & Angelo Secchi, 2006. "Explaining the distribution of firm growth rates," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 37(2), pages 235-256, June.
    12. Ormerod, Paul, 2002. "The US business cycle: power law scaling for interacting units with complex internal structure," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 314(1), pages 774-785.
    13. Adrian Dragulescu & Victor M. Yakovenko, 2000. "Statistical mechanics of money," Papers cond-mat/0001432, arXiv.org, revised Aug 2000.
    14. Delli Gatti, Domenico & Di Guilmi, Corrado & Gaffeo, Edoardo & Gallegati, Mauro, 2004. "Bankruptcy as an exit mechanism for systems with a variable number of components," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 344(1), pages 8-13.
    15. T. Di Matteo & T. Aste & S. T. Hyde, 2003. "Exchanges in complex networks: income and wealth distributions," Papers cond-mat/0310544, arXiv.org.
    16. Gaffeo, E. & Catalano, M. & Clementi, F. & Delli Gatti, D. & Gallegati, M. & Russo, A., 2007. "Reflections on modern macroeconomics: Can we travel along a safer road?," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 382(1), pages 89-97.
    17. Wright, Ian, 2005. "The social architecture of capitalism," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 346(3), pages 589-620.
    18. Yoshi Fujiwara, 2003. "Zipf Law in Firms Bankruptcy," Papers cond-mat/0310062, arXiv.org.
    19. Julian Wells, Julian, 2007. "The rate of profit as a random variable," MPRA Paper 98235, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    20. Gode, Dhananjay K & Sunder, Shyam, 1993. "Allocative Efficiency of Markets with Zero-Intelligence Traders: Market as a Partial Substitute for Individual Rationality," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 101(1), pages 119-137, February.
    21. Youngki Lee & Luis A. N. Amaral & David Canning & Martin Meyer & H. Eugene Stanley, 1998. "Universal features in the growth dynamics of complex organizations," Papers cond-mat/9804100, arXiv.org.
    22. J. Doyne Farmer & Paolo Patelli & Ilija I. Zovko, 2003. "The Predictive Power of Zero Intelligence in Financial Markets," Papers cond-mat/0309233, arXiv.org, revised Feb 2004.
    23. L. A. N. Amaral & S. V. Buldyrev & S. Havlin & H. Leschhorn & P. Maass & M. A. Salinger & H. E. Stanley & M. H. R. Stanley, 1997. "Scaling behavior in economics: I. Empirical results for company growth," Papers cond-mat/9702082, arXiv.org.
    24. Masanao Aoki & Hiroshi Yoshikawa, 2007. "Non-Self-Averaging in Macroeconomic Models: A Criticism of Modern Micro-founded Macroeconomics," CIRJE F-Series CIRJE-F-493, CIRJE, Faculty of Economics, University of Tokyo.
    25. Wright, Ian, 2005. "The duration of recessions follows an exponential not a power law," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 345(3), pages 608-610.
    26. Ormerod, Paul & Mounfield, Craig, 2001. "Power law distribution of the duration and magnitude of recessions in capitalist economies: breakdown of scaling," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 293(3), pages 573-582.
    27. Cook, William & Ormerod, Paul, 2003. "Power law distribution of the frequency of demises of US firms," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 324(1), pages 207-212.
    28. Rizvi, S Abu Turab, 1994. "The Microfoundations Project in General Equilibrium Theory," Cambridge Journal of Economics, Cambridge Political Economy Society, vol. 18(4), pages 357-377, August.
    29. Gaffeo, Edoardo & Gallegati, Mauro & Palestrini, Antonio, 2003. "On the size distribution of firms: additional evidence from the G7 countries," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 324(1), pages 117-123.
    30. Canning, D. & Amaral, L. A. N. & Lee, Y. & Meyer, M. & Stanley, H. E., 1998. "Scaling the volatility of GDP growth rates," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 60(3), pages 335-341, September.
    31. Makoto Nirei & Wataru Souma, 2007. "A Two Factor Model Of Income Distribution Dynamics," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 53(3), pages 440-459, September.
    32. Amaral, L.A.N. & Gopikrishnan, P. & Plerou, V. & Stanley, H.E., 2001. "A model for the growth dynamics of economic organizations," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 299(1), pages 127-136.
    33. Ian Wright, 2008. "The Emergence of the Law of Value in a Dynamic Simple Commodity Economy," Review of Political Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 20(3), pages 367-391.
    34. Adrian A. Dragulescu, 2003. "Applications of physics to economics and finance: Money, income, wealth, and the stock market," Papers cond-mat/0307341, arXiv.org, revised Jul 2003.
    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. Alan G. Isaac, 2019. "Exploring the Social-Architecture Model," Eastern Economic Journal, Palgrave Macmillan;Eastern Economic Association, vol. 45(4), pages 565-589, October.
    2. Alberto Russo, 2017. "An Agent Based Macroeconomic Model with Social Classes and Endogenous Crises," Italian Economic Journal: A Continuation of Rivista Italiana degli Economisti and Giornale degli Economisti, Springer;Società Italiana degli Economisti (Italian Economic Association), vol. 3(3), pages 285-306, November.
    3. Geoff Willis, 2011. "Why Money Trickles Up - Wealth & Income Distributions," Papers 1105.2122, arXiv.org, revised May 2011.
    4. Victor M. Yakovenko & J. Barkley Rosser, 2009. "Colloquium: Statistical mechanics of money, wealth, and income," Papers 0905.1518, arXiv.org, revised Dec 2009.
    5. Victor M. Yakovenko, 2012. "Applications of statistical mechanics to economics: Entropic origin of the probability distributions of money, income, and energy consumption," Papers 1204.6483, arXiv.org.
    6. Alberto Russo, 2014. "A Stochastic Model of Wealth Accumulation with Class Division," Metroeconomica, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 65(1), pages 1-35, February.
    7. Lavička, H. & Lin, L. & Novotný, J., 2010. "Employment, Production and Consumption model: Patterns of phase transitions," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 389(8), pages 1708-1720.

    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. Wright, Ian, 2005. "The social architecture of capitalism," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 346(3), pages 589-620.
    2. Troy Tassier, 2013. "Handbook of Research on Complexity, by J. Barkley Rosser, Jr. and Edward Elgar," Eastern Economic Journal, Palgrave Macmillan;Eastern Economic Association, vol. 39(1), pages 132-133.
    3. Gatti, Domenico Delli & Guilmi, Corrado Di & Gaffeo, Edoardo & Giulioni, Gianfranco & Gallegati, Mauro & Palestrini, Antonio, 2005. "A new approach to business fluctuations: heterogeneous interacting agents, scaling laws and financial fragility," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 56(4), pages 489-512, April.
    4. Antonio Doria, Francisco, 2011. "J.B. Rosser Jr. , Handbook of Research on Complexity, Edward Elgar, Cheltenham, UK--Northampton, MA, USA (2009) 436 + viii pp., index, ISBN 978 1 84542 089 5 (cased)," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 78(1-2), pages 196-204, April.
    5. Hernan Mondani & Petter Holme & Fredrik Liljeros, 2014. "Fat-Tailed Fluctuations in the Size of Organizations: The Role of Social Influence," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 9(7), pages 1-9, July.
    6. Thomas Brenner & Matthias Duschl, 2018. "Modeling Firm and Market Dynamics: A Flexible Model Reproducing Existing Stylized Facts on Firm Growth," Computational Economics, Springer;Society for Computational Economics, vol. 52(3), pages 745-772, October.
    7. Fabio Clementi & Mauro Gallegati, 2005. "Pareto's Law of Income Distribution: Evidence for Grermany, the United Kingdom, and the United States," Microeconomics 0505006, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    8. Xavier Gabaix, 2009. "Power Laws in Economics and Finance," Annual Review of Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 1(1), pages 255-294, May.
    9. Andrew G. Haldane & Arthur E. Turrell, 2019. "Drawing on different disciplines: macroeconomic agent-based models," Journal of Evolutionary Economics, Springer, vol. 29(1), pages 39-66, March.
    10. Pierpaolo Andriani & Bill McKelvey, 2009. "Perspective ---From Gaussian to Paretian Thinking: Causes and Implications of Power Laws in Organizations," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 20(6), pages 1053-1071, December.
    11. Lux, Thomas, 2008. "Applications of statistical physics in finance and economics," Kiel Working Papers 1425, Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel).
    12. Hongduo Cao & Ying Li & Yong Tan, 2014. "The synchronization club: classification of global economic groups by inequality," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 46(21), pages 2502-2510, July.
    13. Matthias Duschl & Thomas Brenner, 2011. "Characteristics of Regional Industry-specific Employment Growth – Empirical Evidence for Germany," Working Papers on Innovation and Space 2011-07, Philipps University Marburg, Department of Geography.
    14. Thomas Brenner & Matthias Duschl, 2014. "Modelling Firm and Market Dynamics - A Flexible Model Reproducing Existing Stylized Facts," Working Papers on Innovation and Space 2014-07, Philipps University Marburg, Department of Geography.
    15. Thomas Lux, 2009. "Applications of Statistical Physics in Finance and Economics," Chapters, in: J. Barkley Rosser Jr. (ed.), Handbook of Research on Complexity, chapter 9, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    16. Gallegati, Mauro & Kirman, Alan, 2019. "20 years of WEHIA: A journey in search of a safer road," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 157(C), pages 5-14.
    17. Alan G. Isaac, 2019. "Exploring the Social-Architecture Model," Eastern Economic Journal, Palgrave Macmillan;Eastern Economic Association, vol. 45(4), pages 565-589, October.
    18. Xie, Wen-Jie & Gu, Gao-Feng & Zhou, Wei-Xing, 2010. "On the growth of primary industry and population of China’s counties," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 389(18), pages 3876-3882.
    19. Giorgio Fagiolo & Mauro Napoletano & Andrea Roventini, 2008. "Are output growth-rate distributions fat-tailed? some evidence from OECD countries," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 23(5), pages 639-669.
    20. Stanley, H.E. & Gabaix, Xavier & Gopikrishnan, Parameswaran & Plerou, Vasiliki, 2007. "Economic fluctuations and statistical physics: Quantifying extremely rare and less rare events in finance," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 382(1), pages 286-301.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Microfoundations; macroeconomics; aggregation; power laws;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • A12 - General Economics and Teaching - - General Economics - - - Relation of Economics to Other Disciplines
    • B41 - Schools of Economic Thought and Methodology - - Economic Methodology - - - Economic Methodology
    • C63 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Mathematical Methods; Programming Models; Mathematical and Simulation Modeling - - - Computational Techniques
    • D50 - Microeconomics - - General Equilibrium and Disequilibrium - - - General
    • E11 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - General Aggregative Models - - - Marxian; Sraffian; Kaleckian
    • P16 - Political Economy and Comparative Economic Systems - - Capitalist Economies - - - Capitalist Institutions; Welfare State

    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:zbw:ifweej:7604. 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: ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/iwkiede.html .

    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.