Modelling intervention: Barbara Bergmann’s micro-to-macro simulation projects

Over a period of 12 years, Barbara Bergmann developed several models of the labour market using microsimulation, eventually integrated in a “Transactions Model” of the entire US economy, built with Robert Bennett and published in 1986. The paper reconstructs the history of this modelling enterprise in the context of the debates on the micro-foundations of macroeconomics and the role of macroeconomic expertise from the 1970s to the late 1980s. It shows how her focus on the distributional effects of policies was central to the criticism of macroeconomic modelling and how both her epistemological and political positions were marginalised in the 1980s.