Microfoundations

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Microfoundations are an effort to understand macroeconomic phenomena in terms of economic agents' behaviors and their interactions. [1] Research in microfoundations explores the link between macroeconomic and microeconomic principles in order to explore the aggregate relationships in macroeconomic models.

Contents

During recent decades, macroeconomists have attempted to combine microeconomic models of individual behaviour to derive the relationships between macroeconomic variables. Presently, many macroeconomic models, representing different theories, [2] are derived by aggregating microeconomic models, allowing economists to test them with both macroeconomic and microeconomic data. However, microfoundations research is still heavily debated with management, strategy and organization scholars having varying views on the "micro-macro" link. [3] The study of microfoundations is gaining popularity even outside the field of economics, recent development includes operation management and project studies. [4]

History and importance

History

The microfoundations project originated in the post-Second World War neoclassical synthesis where it is generally believed that neoclassical microeconomics fused with Keynesian macroeconomics. [5] The 'neoclassical microeconomics' in mention is the Marshallian partial-equilibrium approach, which emerged from the Walrasian general equilibrium theory. [5] However, the Walrasian general equilibrium theory presents another trend to the synthesis as it attempts to theorise the economy as a whole and is viewed as an alternative to macroeconomics. This approach is considered to be the trigger for exploring microfoundations, [1] however, the notion of a gap in the "micro-macro" link has been and continues to be explored in various theories and models.

Critics of the Keynesian theory of macroeconomics argued that some of Keynes' assumptions were inconsistent with standard microeconomics. For example, Milton Friedman's microeconomic theory of consumption over time (the 'permanent income hypothesis') suggested that the marginal propensity to consume (the increase of consumer spending with increased income) due to temporary income, which is crucial for the Keynesian multiplier, was likely to be much smaller than Keynesians assumed. For this reason, many empirical studies have attempted to measure the marginal propensity to consume, [6] and macroeconomists have also studied alternative microeconomic models (such as models of credit market imperfections and precautionary saving) that might imply a greater marginal propensity to consume. [7]

One particularly influential endorsement of the study of microfoundations was Robert Lucas, Jr.'s critique of traditional macroeconometric forecasting models. After the apparent shift of the Phillips curve relationship during the 1970s, Lucas argued that the correlations between aggregate variables observed in macroeconomic data would tend to change whenever macroeconomic policy changed. This implied that microfounded models are more appropriate for predicting the effect of policy changes, using the assumption that changes of macroeconomic policy do not alter the microeconomics of the macroeconomy. [8]

In terms of solutions, DSGE modelling with representative agents has been the most prevalent among literatures. This approach "makes the microeconomic and the macroeconomic level of analysis coincide: a single agent, a utility maximizing individual, represents an entire sector, which may be, for instance banks, consumers, or firms". [9] Therefore, DSGE modelling connects both microeconomic and macroeconomic theories, thus embodying the basis of microfoundations.

Importance

It is suggested that modern mainstream economics is based entirely on DSGE models. [10] [5] Therefore, the importance of microfoundations lies in its synonymous relationship with DSGE. [11]

The Smets-Wouters model is one example of the importance of microfoundations as it is regarded as a benchmark model for analysing monetary and fiscal policy. [12] The model offers three main advantages of microfoundations:

  1. Microfoundations provides a modelling structure where data may not be very informative.
  2. Microfoundations avoids the Lucas Critique as it is able to relate the reduced-form parameters to deeper structural parameters.
  3. Microfoundations provides a basis for estimating the optimality and desirability of policy.

While these points summarise the desire to adopt DSGE models - or microfoundations - there are limitations to the model with scholars stating that their forecast performance can be poor in terms of their ability to forecast individual variables. [5] Therefore, there is continuous debate on the microfoundations project and its efficacy with an overall lack of consensus.

Microfoundations research and development

"Micro" and "macro" research

Specialization in the management and organizational sciences has led to a divide between "macro" and "micro" areas. [13] Research in macro management mainly focuses on the organizational or firm level, while research in micro areas mainly examines individual and group levels within organizations. [14] For example, macro research domains typically include strategic management and organization theory, whereas micro includes areas such as organizational behaviour and human resource management. [14] Most early macroeconomic models, including early Keynesian models, were based on hypotheses about relationships between aggregate quantities, such as aggregate production, employment, consumption, and investment. Critics and proponents of these models disagreed as to whether these aggregate relationships were consistent with the principles of microeconomics. [15] There, bridging these two domains continues to be a topic of debate for organizational, management and strategy scholars. [16] As a result, microfoundations has become a topic of greater interest to researchers as it explores how micro and macro areas connect.  

The microfoundations project

The microfoundations project was developed on the basis that if macroeconomics is associated with aggregate economic models, and microeconomics is associated with the individual behaviours of households and firms, "microfoundations was taken to be the demand that macroeconomic models have microeconomic foundations". [17] Therefore, microfoundations research focuses on the influences of individual actions and interactions on firm heterogeneity. [14] As stated by Felin and Foss (2005), "organizations are made up of individuals, and there is no organization without individuals". [18] Thus, the specific level of the microfoundations project is the individual level as it focuses on this elementary truth. However, there are various assumptions and half-truths that have been explored by scholars within microfoundations research.

Assumptions

There are two main assumptions that the microfoundations project rests upon:

  1. Firstly, it is possible to establish empirically adequate theory of individual behaviour. [19]
  2. Secondly, the theory can be transformed into a theory of the economy using aggregation procedures, without having to make any substantive assumptions about the economy. [19]

However, in addition to these assumptions, various scholars have indicated that microfoundations is understood to be "an application of underlying standpoint, methodological individualism," [5] a concept which also has ambiguity in its meaning. Nevertheless, microfoundations research only means that individual behaviour must be shown to be consistent with macro entities. While there may be various outlooks on the topic, the general consensus implies that to bridge macro and micro theories and models, microfoundations should be adopted.

Challenges

Alan Kirman [20] has argued against the common practice of using a representative agent as micro-foundation for macroeconomic models. First, he suggests that there's a conviction that the model of an individual as a constrained maximiser is adequate. On the basis of the Sonnenschein–Mantel–Debreu theorem, he argues that this conviction is mistaken. Second, he argues that there are multiple reasons as to why the economy cannot be described by a single 'representative agent'. Thus, he suggests that proper micro-foundations should be based not on studies of individuals in isolation but on studies of aggregate activity resulting from the direct interaction between different individuals.

Similarly to Kirman, Robert Solow [21] has argued that the issue with the microfoundation project is the demand that it must be built on Walrasian foundations. According to him, there is however no reason to believe that the world (and thus our microfoundations) should be Walrasian. Although sympathetic to microfoundations overall, Solow points out that the demand for micro-foundations might be exaggerated; the harder sciences do not necessarily describe their objects of interest down to e.g. a molecular level.

S. Abu Turab Rizvi [22] has similarly offered critique against the microfoundation project in general equilibrium theory.

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Microeconomics</span> Behavior of individuals and firms

Microeconomics is a branch of economics that studies the behavior of individuals and firms in making decisions regarding the allocation of scarce resources and the interactions among these individuals and firms. Microeconomics focuses on the study of individual markets, sectors, or industries as opposed to the economy as a whole, which is studied in macroeconomics.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Macroeconomics</span> Study of an economy as a whole

Macroeconomics is a branch of economics that deals with the performance, structure, behavior, and decision-making of an economy as a whole. This includes national, regional, and global economies. Macroeconomists study topics such as output/GDP and national income, unemployment, price indices and inflation, consumption, saving, investment, energy, international trade, and international finance.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Neoclassical economics</span> Approach to economics

Neoclassical economics is an approach to economics in which the production, consumption, and valuation (pricing) of goods and services are observed as driven by the supply and demand model. According to this line of thought, the value of a good or service is determined through a hypothetical maximization of utility by income-constrained individuals and of profits by firms facing production costs and employing available information and factors of production. This approach has often been justified by appealing to rational choice theory.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">General equilibrium theory</span> Theory of equilibrium between supply and demand

In economics, general equilibrium theory attempts to explain the behavior of supply, demand, and prices in a whole economy with several or many interacting markets, by seeking to prove that the interaction of demand and supply will result in an overall general equilibrium. General equilibrium theory contrasts with the theory of partial equilibrium, which analyzes a specific part of an economy while its other factors are held constant. In general equilibrium, constant influences are considered to be noneconomic, or in other words, considered to be beyond the scope of economic analysis. The noneconomic influences may change given changes in the economic factors however, and therefore the prediction accuracy of an equilibrium model may depend on the independence of the economic factors from noneconomic ones.

New Keynesian economics is a school of macroeconomics that strives to provide microeconomic foundations for Keynesian economics. It developed partly as a response to criticisms of Keynesian macroeconomics by adherents of new classical macroeconomics.

In the social sciences, methodological individualism is a method for explaining social phenomena strictly in terms of the decisions of individuals, each being moved by their own personal motivations. In contrast, explanations of social phenomena which assume that cause and effect acts upon whole classes or groups are deemed illusory, and thus rejected according to this approach. Or to put it another way, only group dynamics which can be explained in terms of individual subjective motivations are considered valid. With its bottom-up micro-level approach, methodological individualism is often contrasted with methodological holism, a top-down macro-level approach, and methodological pluralism.

Economists use the term representative agent to refer to the typical decision-maker of a certain type.

A macroeconomic model is an analytical tool designed to describe the operation of the problems of economy of a country or a region. These models are usually designed to examine the comparative statics and dynamics of aggregate quantities such as the total amount of goods and services produced, total income earned, the level of employment of productive resources, and the level of prices.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sonnenschein–Mantel–Debreu theorem</span> Economic theorem

The Sonnenschein–Mantel–Debreu theorem is an important result in general equilibrium economics, proved by Gérard Debreu, Rolf Mantel, and Hugo F. Sonnenschein in the 1970s. It states that the excess demand curve for an exchange economy populated with utility-maximizing rational agents can take the shape of any function that is continuous, has homogeneity degree zero, and is in accordance with Walras's law. This implies that the excess demand function does not take a well-behaved form even if each agent has a well-behaved utility function. Market processes will not necessarily reach a unique and stable equilibrium point.

In economics, aggregate behavior refers to economy-wide sums of individual behavior. It involves relationships between economic aggregates such as national income, government expenditure, and aggregate demand. For example, the consumption function is a relationship between aggregate demand for consumption and aggregate disposable income.

Economics education or economic education is a field within economics that focuses on two main themes:

In economics, an aggregate is a summary measure. It replaces a vector that is composed of many real numbers by a single real number, or a scalar. Consequently, there occur various problems that are inherent in the formulations that use aggregated variables.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dynamic stochastic general equilibrium</span> Macroeconomic method

Dynamic stochastic general equilibrium modeling is a macroeconomic method which is often employed by monetary and fiscal authorities for policy analysis, explaining historical time-series data, as well as future forecasting purposes. DSGE econometric modelling applies general equilibrium theory and microeconomic principles in a tractable manner to postulate economic phenomena, such as economic growth and business cycles, as well as policy effects and market shocks.

The neoclassical synthesis (NCS), or neoclassical–Keynesian synthesis is an academic movement and paradigm in economics that worked towards reconciling the macroeconomic thought of John Maynard Keynes in his book The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (1936) with neoclassical economics.

New classical macroeconomics, sometimes simply called new classical economics, is a school of thought in macroeconomics that builds its analysis entirely on a neoclassical framework. Specifically, it emphasizes the importance of rigorous foundations based on microeconomics, especially rational expectations.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">History of macroeconomic thought</span>

Macroeconomic theory has its origins in the study of business cycles and monetary theory. In general, early theorists believed monetary factors could not affect real factors such as real output. John Maynard Keynes attacked some of these "classical" theories and produced a general theory that described the whole economy in terms of aggregates rather than individual, microeconomic parts. Attempting to explain unemployment and recessions, he noticed the tendency for people and businesses to hoard cash and avoid investment during a recession. He argued that this invalidated the assumptions of classical economists who thought that markets always clear, leaving no surplus of goods and no willing labor left idle.

Robert Wayne Clower was an American economist. He is credited with having largely created the field of stock-flow analysis in economics and with seminal works on the micro-foundations of monetary theory and macroeconomics.

Nicolai Juul Foss is a Danish organizational theorist, and scholar of entrepreneurship and strategy. He is currently a professor at the Copenhagen Business School where he has spent most of his career. Foss' main contribution to organization theory is through the micro-foundational perspective in organization theory and management—examining how individual behaviors aggregate to affect the behavior of larger groups and organizations. He was created a Knight of the Order of the Dannebrog in 2015.

In economic theory and econometrics, the term heterogeneity refers to differences across the units being studied. For example, a macroeconomic model in which consumers are assumed to differ from one another is said to have heterogeneous agents.

Disequilibrium macroeconomics is a tradition of research centered on the role of disequilibrium in economics. This approach is also known as non-Walrasian theory, equilibrium with rationing, the non-market clearing approach, and non-tâtonnement theory. Early work in the area was done by Don Patinkin, Robert W. Clower, and Axel Leijonhufvud. Their work was formalized into general disequilibrium models, which were very influential in the 1970s. American economists had mostly abandoned these models by the late 1970s, but French economists continued work in the tradition and developed fixprice models.

References

  1. 1 2 Maarten Janssen (2008), 'Microfoundations', in The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics, 2nd ed.
  2. ↑ • Thomas Cooley, ed., (1995), Frontiers of Business Cycle Research, Princeton University Press. Description and preview. ISBN   0-691-04323-X.    • Michael Woodford (2003), Interest and Prices: Foundations of a Theory of Monetary Policy, Princeton University Press. Description and Table of Contents. ISBN   0-691-01049-8.
  3. ↑ Barney, Jay; Felin, Teppo (May 2013). "What Are Microfoundations". Academy of Management Perspectives. 27 (2): 138–155. doi:10.5465/amp.2012.0107. JSTOR   43822016. S2CID   154370237.
  4. ↑ Locatelli, Giorgio; Greco, Marco; Invernizzi, Diletta Colette; Grimaldi, Michele; Malizia, Stefania (2020-07-11). "What about the people? Micro-foundations of open innovation in megaprojects". International Journal of Project Management. 39 (2): 115–127. doi:10.1016/j.ijproman.2020.06.009. hdl: 11311/1204792 . ISSN   0263-7863. S2CID   225633977. Archived from the original on 3 July 2020.
  5. 1 2 3 4 5 Denis, Andy (2016-01-02). "Microfoundations". Review of Political Economy. 28 (1): 134–152. doi:10.1080/09538259.2016.1108132. ISSN   0953-8259. S2CID   219717048.
  6. ↑ Robert J. Barro (1993), Macroeconomics, 4th ed. ISBN   0-471-57543-7.
  7. ↑ Angus Deaton (1992), Understanding Consumption, Oxford University Press. Description and chapter-preview links. ISBN   0-19-828824-7.
  8. ↑ 'The Smets-Wouters model': ECB webpage with discussion of advantages of microfounded macroeconomic models Archived 2009-02-26 at the Wayback Machine
  9. ↑ Duffee, Gregory R. (2013-01-01). "Bond Pricing and the Macroeconomy". Handbook of the Economics of Finance. 2: 907–967. doi:10.1016/B978-0-44-459406-8.00013-5. hdl: 10419/101349 . ISBN   9780444594068. ISSN   1574-0102.
  10. ↑ Caiani, Alessandro; Caverzasi, Eugenio (2017), "Decentralized Interacting Macroeconomics and the Agent-Based "Modellaccio"", Introduction to Agent-Based Economics, Elsevier, pp. 15–64, doi:10.1016/b978-0-12-803834-5.00004-7, ISBN   978-0-12-803834-5 , retrieved 2021-04-24
  11. ↑ Sbordone, Argia M.; Tambalotti, Andrea; Rao, Krishna; Walsh, Kieran James (2010-10-01). "Policy Analysis Using DSGE Models: An Introduction". Rochester, NY. SSRN   1692896.{{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  12. ↑ Tovar, Camilo E (2008). "DSGE models and central banks" (PDF). BIS Working Papers.
  13. ↑ Aguinis, Herman; Boyd, Brian K.; Pierce, Charles A; Short, Jeremy C (March 2011). "Walking New Avenues in Management Research Methods and Theories: Bridging Micro and Macro Domains" (PDF). Journal of Management. 37 (2): 395–403. doi: 10.1177/0149206310382456 . S2CID   145547164 – via Sage Publications.
  14. 1 2 3 Molina-Azorín, José F. (2014). "Microfoundations of strategic management: Toward micro–macro research in the resource-based theory". Business Research Quarterly. 17 (2): 102–114. doi: 10.1016/j.brq.2014.01.001 . hdl: 10045/48353 . S2CID   153647466.
  15. ↑ • E. Roy Weintraub (1977). "The Microfoundations of Macroeconomics: A Critical Survey," Journal of Economic Literature, 15(1), pp. 1-23.    • _____ (1979). Microfoundations: The Compatibility of Microeconomics and Macroeconomics, Cambridge. Description and preview.
  16. ↑ Barney, Jay; Felin, Teppo (May 2013). "What Are Microfoundations". Academy of Management Perspectives. 27 (2): 138–155. doi:10.5465/amp.2012.0107. JSTOR   43822016. S2CID   154370237.
  17. ↑ Rizvi, S. Abu Turab (1994), "The Microfoundations Project in General Equilibrium Theory", Cambridge Journal of Economics, 18 (4): 357–377, doi:10.1093/oxfordjournals.cje.a035280
  18. ↑ Felin, Teppo; Foss, Nicolai J. (2005). "Strategic organization: a field in search of micro-foundations". Strategic Organization. 3 (4): 441–455. doi: 10.1177/1476127005055796 . S2CID   14824908.
  19. 1 2 Salehnejad, R. (2006-11-28). Rationality, Bounded Rationality and Microfoundations: Foundations of Theoretical Economics. Springer. ISBN   978-0-230-62515-0.
  20. ↑ Kirman, Alan P (1992). "Whom or What Does the Representative Individual Represent?". Journal of Economic Perspectives. 6 (2): 117–136. CiteSeerX   10.1.1.401.3947 . doi:10.1257/jep.6.2.117. ISSN   0895-3309.
  21. ↑ Solow, Robert M. (1986). "What Is a Nice Girl like You Doing in a Place like This? Macroeconomics after Fifty Years". Eastern Economic Journal. 12 (3): 191–198. ISSN   0094-5056. JSTOR   40325070.
  22. ↑ Rizvi, S. Abu Turab (1994), "The Microfoundations Project in General Equilibrium Theory", Cambridge Journal of Economics, 18 (4): 357–377, doi:10.1093/oxfordjournals.cje.a035280
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