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on Heterodox Microeconomics |
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Issue of 2026–04–20
eleven papers chosen by Carlo D’Ippoliti, Università degli Studi di Roma “La Sapienza” |
| By: | Valérie Lelièvre (BETA - Bureau d'Économie Théorique et Appliquée - AgroParisTech - UNISTRA - Université de Strasbourg - Université de Haute-Alsace (UHA) - Université de Haute-Alsace (UHA) Mulhouse - Colmar - UL - Université de Lorraine - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement); Jean-Noël Ory (CEREFIGE - Centre Européen de Recherche en Economie Financière et Gestion des Entreprises - UL - Université de Lorraine) |
| Abstract: | L'expertise universitaire, l'exigence journalistique https://theconversation.com/entre-capital-risque-et-capital-patient-la-strategie-des-banques-cooperatives-dans-les-fintech-275571 Entre les banques sociétés anonymes et les banques coopératives, la différence concerne notamment la structure du capital et, ce faisant, la gouvernance. Cela a-t-il un impact sur leur manière d'aborder les fintech ? Quelles approches ont développé les banques coopératives pour devenir des investisseurs pas comme les autres ? Pour faire face à la montée en puissance des fintech, les banques françaises explorent de nouvelles formes d'investissement. L'enjeu est de s'adapter au contexte de transformation numérique, où l'offre innovante restructure la demande de services financiers. Les banques coopératives se distinguent en entrant très tôt au capital de jeunes start-up de la finance, parfois dès la phase d'incubation. Cette stratégie risquée leur permet d'apprendre, de tester des technologies et d'ajuster leurs choix dans le temps. Elle les rapproche d'une logique de capital-risque. Si cette logique est a priori en contradiction avec le modèle coopératif originel, qu'elles revendiquent comme davantage ancré sur la relation de long terme et la proximité avec la clientèle, elle constitue néanmoins une réponse cohérente. Les spécificités du capital des banques coopératives ne les ont pas empêchées d'investir dans des start-up du secteur financier. Mais ont-elles mis en oeuvre des stratégies d'investissement particulières ? Edi Kurniawan/Unsplash Entre capital-risque et capital patient : la stratégie des banques coopératives dans les fintech. |
| Keywords: | Banques, Start-up, Economie, Fintech, Capital-investissement, Entreprise(s), Finance |
| Date: | 2026–03–16 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:journl:hal-05583477 |
| By: | Vuorinen, Katariina E. M. |
| Abstract: | It has been proposed that stagnating and contracting economies experience macroeconomic instability due to so-called "economic growth dependencies". Yet, this concept has remained macroeconomically ambiguous, leaving unclear whether and under what conditions such dependencies may rise, leading to numerous, heterogeneous, and sometimes contradictory proposals for purported economic growth dependency mechanisms. This paper applies a post-Keynesian lens on the question of economic growth dependencies and presents a conceptual synthesis, demonstrating that the diversity, heterogeneity and inconsistencies of economic growth dependencies suggested by literature are only apparent. Stock-flow consistent approach shows that economic growth dependency, sensu stricto, comes down to one clearly definable macroeconomic mechanism: asymmetric monetary circulation where certain agents or sectors experience persistent structural liquidity shortfalls creating pressures for continued expansion of aggregate economic activity. This dynamic, however, results in structurally enforced growth only if the liquidity shortfalls cannot be resolved through redistribution or expansion of monetary supply in a competitive market environment. By using this synthesis, the paper refines conceptual boundaries of economic growth dependency and defines the necessary and sufficient conditions under which such dependency arises, clarifying the terminological debate and laying the foundation for a macroeconomically consistent theory of economic growth dependency. The paper will also demonstrate that different economic traditions (post-Keynesian, neoclassical, and ecological economics) hold differing views on economic growth dependencies due to differing model structures. |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:penwps:340038 |
| By: | Lukas Bäuerle (Socio-Ecological Transformation Lab, Johannes Kepler University Linz, Austria; Institute for Comprehensive Analysis of the Economy, Johannes Kepler University Linz, Austria; Department of Socioeconomics, University of Hamburg, Germany); Rouven Reinke (Department of Socioeconomics, University of Hamburg, Germany) |
| Abstract: | Economic expertise in German policymaking has long been shaped by technocratic, market-liberal advisory bodies closely connected to mainstream economics. Over the past decade, however, an alternative knowledge ecosystem—the New Economy Space (NES)—has emerged, promoting heterodox, pluralist, and impact-orientated approaches to economic policy. Drawing on interviews and organisational documents, this paper maps the internal diversity of the NES and compares it with established advisory configurations. We identify three distinct modes of economic knowledge and political interventions: technical and model-driven expertise within institutionalised advisory bodies, paradigm-driven interventions by neoliberal think tanks, and pragmatic, co-creative, and problem-focused approaches within the NES. While institutionalised actors continue to hold greater resources and formal authority, the NES introduces new topics, actor constellations, and practices into economic policy debates. |
| Date: | 2026–04 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ico:wpaper:180 |
| By: | Kun Liu; Liqun Chen |
| Abstract: | The alignment of Multi-Agent Systems (MAS) for autonomous software engineering is constrained by evaluator epistemic uncertainty. Current paradigms, such as Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF) and AI Feedback (RLAIF), frequently induce model sycophancy, while execution-based environments suffer from adversarial "Test Evasion" by unconstrained agents. In this paper, we introduce an objective alignment paradigm: \textbf{Out-of-Money Reinforcement Learning (OOM-RL)}. By deploying agents into the non-stationary, high-friction reality of live financial markets, we utilize critical capital depletion as an un-hackable negative gradient. Our longitudinal 20-month empirical study (July 2024 -- February 2026) chronicles the system's evolution from a high-turnover, sycophantic baseline to a robust, liquidity-aware architecture. We demonstrate that the undeniable ontological consequences of financial loss forced the MAS to abandon overfitted hallucinations in favor of the \textbf{Strict Test-Driven Agentic Workflow (STDAW)}, which enforces a Byzantine-inspired uni-directional state lock (RO-Lock) anchored to a deterministically verified $\geq 95\%$ code coverage constraint matrix. Our results show that while early iterations suffered severe execution decay, the final OOM-RL-aligned system achieved a stable equilibrium with an annualized Sharpe ratio of 2.06 in its mature phase. We conclude that substituting subjective human preference with rigorous economic penalties provides a robust methodology for aligning autonomous agents in high-stakes, real-world environments, laying the groundwork for generalized paradigms where computational billing acts as an objective physical constraint |
| Date: | 2026–04 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2604.11477 |
| By: | Shuide Wen; Beier Ku |
| Abstract: | Building on the Agentic ROI framework proposed by Liu et al. (2026), this paper introduces knowledge compounding as a new measurable concept in the empirical economics of LLM agents and validates it through a controlled four-query experiment on Qing Claw, an industrial-grade C# reimplementation of the OpenClaw multi-agent framework. Our central theoretical claim is that the cost term in the original Agentic ROI equation contains an unexamined assumption -- that the cost of each task is mutually independent. This assumption holds under the traditional retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) paradigm but breaks down once a persistent, structured knowledge layer is introduced. We propose a dynamic Agentic ROI model in which cost is treated as a time-varying function Cost(t) governed by a knowledge-base coverage rate H(t). Empirical results from four sequential queries on the same domain yield a cumulative token consumption of 47K under the compounding regime versus 305K under a matched RAG baseline -- a savings of 84.6%. Calibrated 30-day projections indicate cumulative savings of 53.7% under medium topic concentration and 81.3% under high concentration, with the gap widening monotonically over time. We further identify three microeconomic mechanisms underlying the compounding effect: (i) one-time INGEST amortized over N retrievals, (ii) auto-feedback of high-value answers into synthesis pages, and (iii) write-back of external search results into entity pages. The theoretical contribution of this paper is a recategorization of LLM tokens from consumables to capital goods, shifting the economic discussion from static marginal cost analysis to dynamic capital accumulation. The engineering contribution is a minimal reproducible implementation in approximately 200 lines of C#, which we believe is the first complete industrial-grade reference implementation of Karpathy's (2026) LLM Wiki paradigm. |
| Date: | 2026–04 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2604.11243 |
| By: | Morgane Gonon (CIRED - Centre International de Recherche sur l'Environnement et le Développement - Cirad - Centre de Coopération Internationale en Recherche Agronomique pour le Développement - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - AgroParisTech - Université Paris-Saclay - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - ENPC - École nationale des ponts et chaussées - IP Paris - Institut Polytechnique de Paris); Hugo Mosneron Dupin (La République des savoirs : Lettres, Sciences, Philosophie - CdF (institution) - Collège de France - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - Département de Philosophie - ENS-PSL - ENS-PSL - École normale supérieure - Paris - PSL - Université Paris Sciences et Lettres, CIRED - Centre International de Recherche sur l'Environnement et le Développement - Cirad - Centre de Coopération Internationale en Recherche Agronomique pour le Développement - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - AgroParisTech - Université Paris-Saclay - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - ENPC - École nationale des ponts et chaussées - IP Paris - Institut Polytechnique de Paris) |
| Abstract: | Since the 1970s, ecological economics has promoted the materialisation of economic analysis through the lens of matter and energy flows, hybridising economic concepts with biophysical knowledge. This perspective has progressively diffused into mainstream environmental economics — a development that, at first glance, appears to constitute an ontological and epistemological victory for the embedded economy tradition. Yet re-embedding and the mobilisation of material knowledge are insufficient to strengthen economics' capacity to orient the ecological transformations that are now required. By concentrating on the economy–biosphere interface and deploying a utilitarian rationality aimed at demonstrating the economic case for preservation, materialised economics tends to render invisible the socio-economic conflicts, institutional conditions of action, and structural obstacles to reducing anthropogenic pressures. Biophysical analyses contribute primarily three types of inputs — information, prices, or optimal quantities — whose transformative reach remains limited. These limitations delineate an impossibility triangle for the discipline: simultaneously representing biophysical dynamics, socio-economic systems, and operational levers for transformation. Re-embedding renders things visible, but does not supply the conditions for implementing transformative policies. The article proposes a distinction between ecological objectives (EOs) — defined by compliance with biophysical constraints — and normative ecological objectives (NEOs), which explicitly formulate policies, regulations, or economic actors' courses of action. Material knowledge must be translated into NEOs, while economic analysis focuses on examining their socio-economic, distributional, institutional, and financial consequences. The proposed framework organises a six-step research programme oriented towards analysing the conditions of possibility for ecological transformations, rather than demonstrating their economic rationality. This reorientation refocuses economics on its proper objects — production, distribution, institutions, and conflict — while preserving the biophysical constraint, and enables the articulation of material knowledge, political decision-making, and economic analysis within a consequentialist perspective. |
| Abstract: | Depuis les années 1970, l'économie écologique a promu la matérialisation de l'analyse économique fondée sur les flux de matière et d'énergie, en hybridant les concepts économiques et les savoirs biophysiques. Cette perspective s'est progressivement diffusée jusqu'à l'économie de l'environnement dominante, ce qui constitue à première vue une victoire ontologique et épistémologique de l'économie encastrée. Cependant, le réencastement et la mobilisation de savoirs matériels ne suffisent pas à renforcer la capacité de la discipline économique à orienter les transformations écologiques nécessaires. En se concentrant sur l'interface économie-biosphère et en mobilisant une rationalité utilitaire visant à démontrer l'intérêt économique de la préservation, l'économie matérialisée tend à invisibiliser les conflictualités socio-économiques, les conditions institutionnelles de l'action et les obstacles à la réduction des pressions anthropiques. Les analyses biophysiques apportent principalement trois types de contributions — information, prix ou quantité optimale — dont la portée transformative demeure limitée. Ces limites dessinent un « triangle d'impossibilité » pour la discipline économique : représenter simultanément les dynamiques biophysiques, les systèmes socio-économiques et des leviers de transformation opérationnels. L'encastrement permet essentiellement de rendre visible, sans fournir les conditions de mise en œuvre de politiques transformatrices. L'article propose une distinction entre objectifs écologiques (OE) — définis par le respect de contraintes biophysiques — et objectifs écologiques normatifs (OEN), qui formulent explicitement des politiques, réglementations ou actions d'acteurs économiques. Les savoirs matériels doivent être traduits en OEN, tandis que l'analyse économique se concentre sur l'étude de leurs conséquences socio-économiques, distributives, institutionnelles et financières. Le formalisme proposé organise ainsi un programme de recherche en six étapes visant à analyser les conditions de possibilité des transformations écologiques plutôt qu'à en démontrer la rationalité économique. Ce déplacement recentre la science économique sur ses objets propres — production, distribution, institutions et conflits — tout en maintenant la contrainte biophysique, et permet d'articuler savoirs matériels, décision politique et analyse économique dans une perspective conséquentialiste. |
| Keywords: | Environmental economics, Ecological economics, Political ecology, Political economy |
| Date: | 2026–03–24 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:ciredw:hal-05567895 |
| By: | Cordilha, Ana Carolina |
| Abstract: | Does the French social protection system act as a brake on financialized capitalism, or as one of its mechanisms? The system is often presented as a Fordist legacy standing in the way of a finance-dominated accumulation regime. This reading appears to rest on a perspective that does not fully account for its recent transformations. This article analyzes the financing arrangements of social protection in the era of financialized capitalism and questions its place within a financialized economy. Drawing on the concept of financialization, it traces the recomposition of financing since the 1990s, showing how the system has integrated financial capital, through what instruments, and at what cost. The method combines an original quantitative analysis of financial flows between social protection bodies and the financial sector over the period 1990–2024, complemented by a qualitative analysis of institutional and financial documents. The article then offers a reinterpretation of its role in the contemporary configuration of capitalism, drawing on regulation theory. The results show that the system has integrated financial actors and instruments at the core of its financing. Its model is now hybrid: non-repayable resources from compulsory levies are supplemented by repayable funds, accompanied by interest payments to financial actors. Thus, far from restraining a financialized economy, social protection today appears to contribute to its reproduction. It produces safe and profitable assets that fuel financial expansion, while containing the social tensions liable to destabilize it. |
| Keywords: | Financialization; financialisation; financialized capitalism; financialised capitalism; social policy; social protection; regulation theory; finance; health; financiarisation; capitalisme financiarisé; protection sociale; théorie de la régulation; Sécurité sociale; santé |
| JEL: | G1 G10 G23 I0 I1 I18 I38 |
| Date: | 2026–03–22 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:128653 |
| By: | Jose Negrete Jr; Jaime Joel Ramos |
| Abstract: | Factor models characterize the joint behavior of large sets of financial assets through a smaller number of underlying drivers. We develop a network-based framework in which factors emerge naturally from the structure of interactions among assets rather than being imposed statistically. The market is modeled as a system of coupled iterated maps, where assets' return depends on its own past returns and those of related assets. Effectively modeling the influence of irrational traders whose decisions are based on the past movements of a collection of stocks. The interaction structure between stock returns is defined by a coupling matrix derived from an orthogonal transformation of a Laplacian matrix that gradually links initially isolated clusters into a fully connected network. Within this structure, stable patterns of co-movement arise and can be interpreted as financial factors. The relationship between the initial clustering and the number of observed factors is consistent with a center manifold reduction. We identify an optimal regime in which assets' variance is effectively explained by the set of factors produced by the network. Our framework offers a structural perspective based on interaction-based factor formation and dimension reduction in financial markets. |
| Date: | 2026–04 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2604.12197 |
| By: | Diego Vallarino |
| Abstract: | Why do capitalist economies recurrently generate crises whose severity is disproportionate to the size of the triggering shock? This paper proposes a structural answer grounded in the evolutionary geometry of production networks. As economies evolve through specialization, integration, and competitive selection, their inter-sectoral linkages drift toward configurations of increasing geometric fragility, eventually crossing a threshold beyond which small disturbances generate disproportionately large cascades. We introduce Sandpile Economics, a formal framework that interprets macroeconomic instability as an emergent property of disequilibrium production networks. The key state variable is the Forman--Ricci curvature of the input--output graph, capturing local substitution possibilities when supply chains are disrupted. We show that when curvature falls below an endogenous threshold, the distribution of cascade sizes follows a power law with tail index $\alpha \in (1, 2)$, implying a regime of unbounded amplification. The underlying mechanism is evolutionary: specialization reduces input substitutability, pushing the economy toward criticality, while crisis episodes induce endogenous network reconfiguration and path dependence. These dynamics are inherently non-ergodic and cannot be captured by representative-agent frameworks. Empirically, using global input--output data, we document that production networks operate in persistently negative curvature regimes and that curvature robustly predicts medium-run output dynamics. A one-standard-deviation increase in curvature is associated with higher cumulative growth over three-year horizons, and curvature systematically outperforms standard network metrics in explaining cross-country differences in resilience. |
| Date: | 2026–04 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2604.13890 |
| By: | Kawauchi, Atsushi (Tohoku University) |
| Abstract: | Resilience research in disaster studies has advanced rapidly but faces a fundamental methodological problem: the absence of historical context. Criteria for judging resilience "success" vary across periods and regions, yet the risk of anachronism inherent in applying universal resilience models has been consistently overlooked. This paper presents the "Three-Layer Temporal Structure Theory of Disaster Social History, " drawing on Fernand Braudel's tripartite conception of historical time. The framework analyzes disaster phenomena through the mutually interpenetrating dynamics of geographic time (millennia), structural time (decades to centuries), and event-historical time (days to years), redefining "resilience" not as recovery capacity but as a process of "historical reconstruction" shaped by historical context. Through analysis of flood response history from the seventeenth century to the present in the Igu region of Miyagi Prefecture, three theoretical findings are derived. First, transitions in the structural time layer produce "transitional vulnerability, " in which existing resilience forms are dismantled before new ones emerge. Second, interactions among the three layers are bidirectional: events in lower layers can transform upper layers. Third, the recurrent invocation of "beyond all expectation" constitutes critical evidence that normative criteria for "normality" are historically constructed within the structural time layer. The framework provides an interdisciplinary analytical axis bridging the natural sciences and the humanities, while offering a critical historical perspective for contemporary disaster risk reduction policy. |
| Date: | 2026–04–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:socarx:dym8k_v1 |
| By: | Simone Voigt (first name last name) (Paderborn University) |
| Abstract: | This paper empirically investigates the relationship between market power and female board representation in large commercial banks in the EU-27 from 2020 to 2024. Using the Lerner Index as a proxy for market power and hand-collected data on female board representation, the findings suggest that increasing market power is detrimental to a bank’s likelihood of reaching the 33 percent gender diversity target for the board of directors, as proposed by the EU Directive EU2022/2381. The negative effect is especially pronounced for listed banks and systemically important banks, highlighting the importance of considering banking market structures (market power and competition) when enforcing regulatory diversity standards for those banks in particular. (abstract of the paper) |
| Keywords: | Market Power, Competition, Gender Diversity, Bankking, Female Board Representaton (keywords) |
| JEL: | G21 G34 J71 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pdn:dispap:175 |