We present a model of a dynamic and complex economy in which the creation and the destruction of money result from interactions between multiple and heterogeneous agents. In the baseline scenario, we observe the stabilization of the income distribution between wages and profits. We then alter the model by increasing the flexibility of wages. This change leads to the formation of a deflationary spiral. Aggregate activity decreases and unemployment increases. The macroeconomic stability of the model is affected and eventually a systemic crisis arises. Finally, we show that the introduction of a minimum wage would have made it possible to boost the aggregate demand and to avoid this crisis.

International audienceMacroeconomic dynamics are characterized by alternating patterns of periods of relative stability and large swings. Standard micro-founded macro-economic models account for these patterns through exogenous and persistent shocks. In this paper, we develop a fully decentralized and micro-founded macro-economic agent-based model, augmented with an opinion model, which produces endogenous waves of pessimism and optimism that feed back into firms' leverage and households' precautionary saving behaviour. A major emergent property of our model is precisely the complex successions of stable and unstable macro-economic regimes. The model is further able to account for a wide spectrum of macro-and micro empirical regularities. Within this framework, we analyse a series of macro-economic phenomena of key relevance in the current macro-economic debate, especially the occurrence of deleveraging crises and Fisherian debt-deflation recessions. Our analysis suggests that the relative dynamics of prices and wages and the resulting income distribution along a deflation-ary path are critical determinants of the severity of the recession, and the chances of recovery

This paper studies coordination between firms in a multi-sectoral macroeconomic model with endogenous business cycles. Firms are both in competition and interdependent, and set their prices with a markup over unit costs. Markups are heterogeneous and evolve under market pressure. We observe a systematic coordination within firms in each sector, and between each sector. The resulting pattern of relative prices are consistent with the labor theory of value. Those emerging features are robust to technology shocks.