Economics and Management

The dissertation is aimed at offering an insight in to the agent-based methodology and its possible application to the macroeconomic a nalysis. Relying on this methodology, I deal with three different issues concernin g heterogeneity of economic agents, bounded rationality and interaction. Specifically, the first chapter is devoted to descr ibe the distinctive characteristics of agent-based economics and its advantages-disadvanta ges. 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 Bank ing 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 m uch effort in the behavioural characterization of the three pillars of Keynes’s e conomics – namely the MEC, MPC and LP – relying on his clear refusal of perfect ra ionality in the decision making process. The last chapter adds to the literature th at assesses the impact of monetary policy under the hypothesis of agent’s bounded rati on lity. Indeed, I design a quasi rational process through which inflation expectatio ns are updated, and then I analyze how this hypothesis interacts with the efficac y of different monetary policy re-