Heterogeneous expectations and strong uncertainty in a Minskyan model of financial fluctuations

We examine the role of expectations in a model aimed to explain financial fluctuations. The model restates the core of Minsky’s financial instability hypothesis, focusing on the role of expectations. The hypotheses concerning the process of formation and revision of expectations are discussed in light of Keynes’s epistemological view of the behaviour of boundedly rational agents under conditions of strong uncertainty. These hypotheses are formalized by drawing on recent advances in complex dynamics, decision theory and behavioural economics. We show that widespread use of extrapolative expectations by economic agents produces a high degree of financial instability that may lead to a serious financial crisis, and that the use by economic agents of a mix of extrapolative and regressive expectations reduces the dynamical instability of the model but may give rise to complex dynamics.