2015 Articles

Economies with Heterogeneous Interacting Learning Agents

Landini, Simone; Gallegati, Mauro; Stiglitz, Joseph E.

Economic agents differ from physical atoms because of the learning capability and memory, which lead to strategic behaviour. Economic agents learn how to interact and behave by modifying their behaviour when the economic environment changes. We show that business fluctuations are endogenously generated by the interaction of learning agents via the phenomenon of regenerative-coordination, i.e. agents choose a learning strategy which leads to a pair of output and price which feedback on learning, possibly modifying it. Mathematically, learning is modelled as a chemical reaction of different species of elements, while inferential analysis develops combinatorial master equation, a technique, which is an alternative approach in modelling heterogeneous interacting learning agents.