Three essays in agent-based macroeconomics

The dissertation is aimed at offering an insight into the agent-based methodology and its possible application to the macroeconomic analysis. Relying on this methodology, I deal with three different issues concerning heterogeneity of economic agents, bounded rationality and interaction. Specifically, the first chapter is devoted to describe the distinctive characteristics of agent-based economics and its advantages-disadvantages. In the second chapter I propose a credit market framework characterized by the presence of asymmetric information between the banks and the entrepreneurs. I analyze how entrepreneurs’ heterogeneity and the presence of Relationship Banking influences the macro properties of the designed system. In the third chapter I work to take the core of Keynes’s macroeconomics into the computer laboratory, in the spirit of a counterfactual history of economic thought. In particular, I devote much effort in the behavioural characterization of the three pillars of Keynes’s economics – namely the MEC, MPC and LP – relying on his clear refusal of perfect rationality in the decision making process. The last chapter adds to the literature that assesses the impact of monetary policy under the hypothesis of agent’s bounded rationality. Indeed, I design a quasi rational process through which inflation expectations are updated, and then I analyze how this hypothesis interacts with the efficacy of different monetary policy regimes.