Macrocosm Substack

Where economics is heading

Jul 8, 2026

Researcher Marco Pangallo reports from a Paris workshop on the future of the field, where a growing consensus is forming around agent-based models built on real-time, granular data — like Chile's record of every transaction in its economy. He explains why shedding rigid equilibrium assumptions lets these models capture the heterogeneity and complexity traditional macroeconomics can't, and how a shared leaderboard could finally benchmark competing models against reality.