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Axiomatic Economics: The Biggest Dying Paradigm

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Complex Agent-Based Models

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Abstract

This work is built on the assumption that the current crisis is both ecological and socio-economical, and also one of economic theory. I won’t deal with the climate and eco-social crises here (see Klein, Penguin, London, 2014; Danovaro and Gallegati, Giunti, Firenze, 2018). I shall focus instead on why the crisis is creating a radical rethinking of economic theory. The economic crisis has, in fact, produced a crisis in economics. And not just because it wasn’t able to predict the arrival of the crisis itself (a very doubtful possibility in social and complex disciplines), but rather because such a massive decrease cannot even be imagined by the dominant economic theory, obsessed as it is by the straitjacket of equilibrium, unless you consider, for example, that a reduction of 20% in production is a healthy state of equilibrium.

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Gallegati, M. (2018). Axiomatic Economics: The Biggest Dying Paradigm. In: Complex Agent-Based Models. New Economic Windows. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-93858-5_1

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