Since the 2008 crisis, Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium (DSGE) models have been facing criticisms.[1] The use of the representative agent assumption, the difficulty to account for the financial aspects of the business cycle, and the exogenous explanation of downturns were all put to blame. This resulted in transformations of DSGE models and in a growing interest for alternative approaches to macroeconomics, particularly for Macro-Agents Based Models (MABM). Did MABM influence the research agenda in DSGE macroeconomics? What is the nature of the differences between the macro agent-based and the DSGE approach to macroeconomics? How do MABM and DSGE models confront with empirical evidence? What sort of expertise do they offer? Our session intends to explore these questions.

This paper proposes to examine the nature of the influence MABM may have on macroeconomics research agenda. First, we propose to identify the different topics investigated by both approaches and then to determine whether there is a convergence in their respective research agenda. This (potential) influence may nevertheless tend towards the superficial, we then propose at a second stage to examine to what extent more precise ideas, or concepts, initially developed by MABM have been in fine absorbed (and how) by the DSGE models. We can show that the DSGE approach is less monolithic than it used to be at the time of the New Synthesis: one can indeed identify a growing literature which developed at the margin of DSGE approach, including elements of heterogeneous agent modelling and social interactions, bounded rationality, macroeconomics experiments, expectation formation and learning etc. Beyond this specific debate, the paper questions the capacity of the current dominant approach to benefit from cross-fertilization and to define more precisely the nature of that process.

[1] Cf. the recent special issue published at Oxford Review of Economic policy, March 2018 for a synthesis of the critics addressed to DSGE models and  the special issue at the Journal of Economic Perspectives published in July 2018 for a synthesis of DSGE models’ answers.