This book challenges the mainstream paradigm, which is based on the inter-temporal optimisation of welfare by individual agents. It introduces a new methodology for studying how it is institutions which create flows of income, expenditure and production together with stocks of assets (including money) and liabilities, thereby determining how whole economies evolve through time. Starting with extremely simple stock flow consistent (SFC) models, the text describes a succession of increasingly complex models. Solutions of these models are used to illustrate ways in which whole economies evolve when shocked in various ways. Readers will be able to download all the models and explore their properties for themselves. A major conclusion is that economies require management via fiscal and monetary policy if full employment without inflation is to be achieved.

This book challenges the mainstream paradigm, based on the inter-temporal optimisation of welfare by individual agents. It introduces a methodology for studying how it is institutions which create flows of income, expenditure and production together with stocks of assets and liabilities, thereby determining how whole economies evolve through time.

This book challenges the mainstream paradigm with the introduction of a new methodology. Economies are represented realistically in a fully articulated system of national income and flow of funds accounts. The authors study how flows of income, expenditure and production are intertwined with stocks of assets and liabilities, determining how whole economies evolve through time.
Starting with extremely simple stock-flow consistent models, the text describes a succession of increasingly complex models constructed with such rigor that, in harmony with its basis in accounting, there is always one equation which is implied logically by all the others. Readers will be able to download all the models and explore their properties for themselves.