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AbstractWe are entering the third decade of the twenty-first century with profound uncertainties and crucial challenges for the world economy. Phenomena like climate change, digital transformation, migration, demographic changes, and the ongoing COVID pandemic need to be understood and promptly addressed. We argue that the agent-based approach in economics is well suited to tackle these topics, because of its capacity to integrate the "micro" and "macro" dimensions by modelling the network of interactions among heterogeneous economic agents and their aggregate outcomes. This paper explains why the agent-based methodology is needed to overcome the limitations of the neoclassical approach in economics, which has not been able to properly address those challenges. To do so, the paper retraces the main stages of the scientific evolution in a general historical and epistemological perspective, showing how the paradigm of reductionism, which led to extraordinary advances after the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century, is less effective when addressing the main challenges ahead. On the other hand, the sciences of chaos theory and complex systems can provide the economic discipline with more suitable instruments to face those challenges. Finally, the paper briefly presents the contributions of the special issue, which use applications of agent-based models to study the main problems of our times.

Basel III is a recently-agreed regulatory standard for bank capital adequacy with focus on the macroprudential dimension of banking regulation, i.e., the system- wide implications of banks' lending and risk. An important Basel III provision is to reduce procyclicality of present banking regulation and promote countercyclical capital buffers for banks. The Eurace agent-based macroeconomic model and sim- ulator has been recently showed to be able to reproduce a credit-fueled boom-bust dynamics where excessive bank leverages, while benefitting in the short term, have destabilizing effects in the medium-long term. In this paper we employ the Eu- race model to test regulatory policies providing time varying capital requirements for banks, based on mechanisms that enforce banks to build up or release capital buffers, according to the overall conditions of the economy. As conditioning variables for these dynamic policies, both the unemployment rate and the aggregate credit growth have been considered. Results show that the dynamic regulation of capital requirements is generally more successful than fixed tight capital requirements in stabilizing the economy and improving the macroeconomic performance.

International audience ; The present REPE issue 2-2020 is the second part of our inaugural "double pack". We were lucky to receive more papers for the inaugural issue than we could accommodate in one issue. So please enjoy another set of challenging original research papers gauging the field of evolutionary political economy. In Financialisation and the periodisation of capitalism: appearances and processes, Jan Toporowski argues that the analysis of financial processes is essential for understanding changes in the financial system. Only these processes give rise to appearances such as the statistical data that are the basis of most studies of financialization. Those processes are fundamentally determined by the structure of the financial system. Following Minsky, Toporowski focuses on corporate finance which, through its effect on business investment, influences the dynamics of the capitalist system. As financial structures change, this gives rise to particular phases of capitalist development. The paper thus builds on Minsky's historical institutional analysis, but offers a more systematic analysis. It offers a periodization of capitalism through mercantile capitalism, classic, bank-based capitalism, finance capital, state finance capitalism, to pension fund capitalism and capital market inflation. It shows how each period ends with financial difficulties that are overcome with financial innovation leading to a new financial structure with corresponding changes in financial processes. Specifically, the paper argues that the phase of capital market inflation, inaugurated by funded pension schemes in the last decades of the twentieth century, has come to an end in the illiquidity of capital markets that lies behind the 2008 financial crisis. The paper suggests that the measures of "unconventional monetary policy", or "Quantitative Easing", mark a new period of state finance capital with a return to the state support of a structurally illiquid capital market that already had prevailed in Europe and North America ...

International audience ; The present REPE issue 2-2020 is the second part of our inaugural "double pack". We were lucky to receive more papers for the inaugural issue than we could accommodate in one issue. So please enjoy another set of challenging original research papers gauging the field of evolutionary political economy. In Financialisation and the periodisation of capitalism: appearances and processes, Jan Toporowski argues that the analysis of financial processes is essential for understanding changes in the financial system. Only these processes give rise to appearances such as the statistical data that are the basis of most studies of financialization. Those processes are fundamentally determined by the structure of the financial system. Following Minsky, Toporowski focuses on corporate finance which, through its effect on business investment, influences the dynamics of the capitalist system. As financial structures change, this gives rise to particular phases of capitalist development. The paper thus builds on Minsky's historical institutional analysis, but offers a more systematic analysis. It offers a periodization of capitalism through mercantile capitalism, classic, bank-based capitalism, finance capital, state finance capitalism, to pension fund capitalism and capital market inflation. It shows how each period ends with financial difficulties that are overcome with financial innovation leading to a new financial structure with corresponding changes in financial processes. Specifically, the paper argues that the phase of capital market inflation, inaugurated by funded pension schemes in the last decades of the twentieth century, has come to an end in the illiquidity of capital markets that lies behind the 2008 financial crisis. The paper suggests that the measures of "unconventional monetary policy", or "Quantitative Easing", mark a new period of state finance capital with a return to the state support of a structurally illiquid capital market that already had prevailed in Europe and North America ...

International audience The present REPE issue 2-2020 is the second part of our inaugural "double pack". We were lucky to receive more papers for the inaugural issue than we could accommodate in one issue. So please enjoy another set of challenging original research papers gauging the field of evolutionary political economy. In Financialisation and the periodisation of capitalism: appearances and processes, Jan Toporowski argues that the analysis of financial processes is essential for understanding changes in the financial system. Only these processes give rise to appearances such as the statistical data that are the basis of most studies of financialization. Those processes are fundamentally determined by the structure of the financial system. Following Minsky, Toporowski focuses on corporate finance which, through its effect on business investment, influences the dynamics of the capitalist system. As financial structures change, this gives rise to particular phases of capitalist development. The paper thus builds on Minsky's historical institutional analysis, but offers a more systematic analysis. It offers a periodization of capitalism through mercantile capitalism, classic, bank-based capitalism, finance capital, state finance capitalism, to pension fund capitalism and capital market inflation. It shows how each period ends with financial difficulties that are overcome with financial innovation leading to a new financial structure with corresponding changes in financial processes. Specifically, the paper argues that the phase of capital market inflation, inaugurated by funded pension schemes in the last decades of the twentieth century, has come to an end in the illiquidity of capital markets that lies behind the 2008 financial crisis. The paper suggests that the measures of "unconventional monetary policy", or "Quantitative Easing", mark a new period of state finance capital with a return to the state support of a structurally illiquid capital market that already had prevailed in Europe and North America ...

International audience ; The present REPE issue 2-2020 is the second part of our inaugural "double pack". We were lucky to receive more papers for the inaugural issue than we could accommodate in one issue. So please enjoy another set of challenging original research papers gauging the field of evolutionary political economy. In Financialisation and the periodisation of capitalism: appearances and processes, Jan Toporowski argues that the analysis of financial processes is essential for understanding changes in the financial system. Only these processes give rise to appearances such as the statistical data that are the basis of most studies of financialization. Those processes are fundamentally determined by the structure of the financial system. Following Minsky, Toporowski focuses on corporate finance which, through its effect on business investment, influences the dynamics of the capitalist system. As financial structures change, this gives rise to particular phases of capitalist development. The paper thus builds on Minsky's historical institutional analysis, but offers a more systematic analysis. It offers a periodization of capitalism through mercantile capitalism, classic, bank-based capitalism, finance capital, state finance capitalism, to pension fund capitalism and capital market inflation. It shows how each period ends with financial difficulties that are overcome with financial innovation leading to a new financial structure with corresponding changes in financial processes. Specifically, the paper argues that the phase of capital market inflation, inaugurated by funded pension schemes in the last decades of the twentieth century, has come to an end in the illiquidity of capital markets that lies behind the 2008 financial crisis. The paper suggests that the measures of "unconventional monetary policy", or "Quantitative Easing", mark a new period of state finance capital with a return to the state support of a structurally illiquid capital market that already had prevailed in Europe and North America ...