AbstractThe purpose of this work is twofold. First, we highlight the importance of the finance motive in Keynes and how it has affected the work of Augusto Graziani and Hyman Minsky. Second, we build an agent‐based model where artificial agents replicate heterogeneous financial behavior induced from discovery driven economic experiments. The aggregate and disaggregate outcomes of the model are then investigated to identify the role of entrepreneurs' financial decisions in facing aggregate negative events or in generating endogenous business cycles.