Microfoundational angels

14 Oct, 2016 at 17:15 | Posted in Economics | Comments Off on Microfoundational angels

Amongst the several problems/disadvantages of this current consensus is that, in order to make a rational expectations, micro-founded model mathematically and analytically tractable it has been necessary in general to impose some (absurdly) simplifying assumptions, notably the existence of representative agents, who never default.This latter (nonsensical) assumption goes under the jargon term as the transversality condition.

This makes all agents perfectly creditworthy. Over any horizon there is only one interest rate facing all agents, i.e. no risk premia. All transactions can be undertaken in capital markets; there is no role for banks. Since all IOUs are perfectly creditworthy, there is no need for money. There are no credit constraints. Everyone is angelic; there is no fraud; and this is supposed to be properly micro-founded!

Charles Goodhart