An Agent Based Macroeconomic Model with Social Classes and Endogenous Crises

Abstract

This paper proposes an agent based macroeconomic model in which income distribution and wealth accumulation depend on the role that agents play in productive activities, that is capitalists or workers. In this framework, social class dynamics underlie the endogenous process of firm formation. The focus is on the interplay between the evolution of social structure and macroeconomic dynamics and on how business cycles and crises may endogenously emerge as the result of the interaction between financial and real factors underlying the process of capitalist production.

Keywords: Heterogeneous Interacting Agents; Social Structure, Macroeconomic Dynamics, Inequality, Crisis

JEL Classification: P10, D31, C63