|
on Heterodox Microeconomics |
|
Issue of 2026–05–18
nineteen papers chosen by Carlo D’Ippoliti, Università degli Studi di Roma “La Sapienza” |
| By: | Taha, Mai; Salem, Sara |
| Abstract: | Histories of capitalism in Egypt and the broader postcolonial world have much to gain from theorizing the home as a space of labor and care as a form of work. In this article the authors think with two Egyptian novels—The Open Door by Latifa al-Zayyat and Dhat by Sonallah Ibrahim—that center intimacy, care, and the home in their understandings of political and economic change. Representing both a revolutionary and a counterrevolutionary moment in Egypt, the two novels engage revolutionary politics through the lens of what they feel like, highlighting the affective nature of such moments. Moreover, centering the home as a space from which to theorize capitalism shows that social reproduction has always been part of the story of modern Egypt, and that the home has always been a political space, despite its haunting absence in work on capitalism in Egyptian history. When the home and what it feels like become a starting theoretical point, the functioning of capitalism becomes entangled with care work and the depletion that often comes with it. The authors trace this through both novels, addressing how one might theorize global capitalism through the home, through the novel, and through the past. |
| Keywords: | Egypt; capitalism; social reproduction; revolution |
| JEL: | R14 J01 |
| Date: | 2026–04–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:129610 |
| By: | Nicola Cortinovis; ; |
| Abstract: | Crowdfunding (CF) has emerged as a novel source of entrepreneurial finance, yet its role in shaping regional industrial dynamics remains poorly understood. Adopting an evolutionary economic geography perspective and exploiting a newly developed database, this paper examines the relationship between crowdfunding activity and the emergence of new local industrial specializations. The analysis shows that industries receiving funds through CF are more likely to become part of local specialization patterns, especially when they are related to the existing industrial structure. Moreover, these associations are stronger in counties characterized by higher levels of credit insecurity. |
| Keywords: | Crowdfunding, industrial diversification, relatedness, credit insecurity, US |
| JEL: | O14 O31 |
| Date: | 2026–05 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:egu:wpaper:2607 |
| By: | Andrea Salustri (DSGE, Sapienza Università di Roma - Istituto di Economia e Finanza); Eugenio Montefusco (Department of Mathematics Guido Castelnuovo, Sapienza University of Rome); Silvia Sacchetti (Dipartimento di Sociologia e Ricerca Sociale Università di Trento) |
| Abstract: | This paper develops a novel analytical framework to interpret the global polycrisis using the lenses of multidimensional inequalities and epistemic injustices. Moving beyond fragmented literature, we formalize an epistemological space by evolving from Hotelling’s linear and Salop’s circular models toward a spheroidal and volumetric representation. In this setting, the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) act as exchange platforms tangent to the sphere, organized within a geodesic grid of meridians and parallels that define an epistemological North, Centre, and South. A key original contribution is the conceptualization of the commons as the sphere’s internal diameter, introducing epistemic depth as a systemic foundation to counter processes of predatory inclusion. By applying polar coordinates (θ, ϕ), the study tracks the historical evolution of crisis epicentres from the Dot-com bubble to the Covid-19 pandemic, demonstrating how uncoordinated interventions generate structural fractures and epistemic voids. We argue that social welfare is maximized through the directional diversity provided by Social and Solidarity Economy Organizations (SSEEOs), which operate within the system’s internal volume to bridge visible exchange platforms with the generative depth of the commons. This framework enhances long-term thinking by providing a precise tool for navigating the interconnected failures of modern global systems. |
| Keywords: | global polycrisis, multidimensional inequality, epistemic injustice, epistemological space, Social and Solidarity Economy Enterprises and Organizations (SSEEOs), Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). |
| JEL: | D63 L31 O19 R12 |
| Date: | 2026–05 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:gfe:pfrp00:00082 |
| By: | Oleg V. Pavlov; Robert Y. Cavana; I. David Wheat; Khalid Saeed; Michael J. Radzicki; Brian C. Dangerfield |
| Abstract: | System dynamics is a methodology that is widely used in many academic fields. It explains the behavior of social and economic systems with models that capture complex causality and feedback effects. This 'practice paper' discusses the opportunities and barriers for introducing feedback thinking and system dynamics models in the economics curriculum. We start by providing a pricing feedback model that illustrates some of the benefits that system dynamics can provide in enhancing economics education. Then we summarize the experiences of each of the authors in teaching system dynamics on economics educational programs. This includes different approaches to teaching economics with system dynamics that depend on the learning objectives, the preparation of students, and the background of the instructor. We also develop a four-level course hierarchy for using system dynamics in economics teaching. We then point out the tradeoffs that instructors must consider as they introduce new pedagogies for delivering economics material. Finally, we provide some concluding comments with some suggestions for future work. The expected audiences for this paper are instructors as well as graduate students who are considering academia as a profession. |
| Date: | 2026–05 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2605.06757 |
| By: | Chambers, Thomas; Grover, Shalini |
| Abstract: | This article introduces and conceptualises ‘protective care’ – a masculinised and commodified form of caregiving – involving male domestic workers (MDWs) in India. Drawing on ethnographic research, it describes how MDWs negotiate gendered authority within feminized and stigmatised labour. Challenging portrayals of MDWs as passive or silenced, the article highlights constrained agency and efforts to assert masculine respectability. By linking empirical insights from India with debates on ‘caring masculinities’, the article shows how protective care recodes hegemonic norms. Ultimately, protective care emerges as both an adaptation and constraint; it enables assertions of paternal authority in domestic workplaces, but is also a commodity that must be carefully performed to meet expectations of employers within marginalised and informalized labour regimes. |
| Keywords: | India; masculinities; care; caring masculinities; informal economy; paid domestic work |
| JEL: | R14 J01 J1 |
| Date: | 2026–04–15 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:138118 |
| By: | Izaguirre, Lorena |
| Abstract: | This article addresses a central question: how are colonial hierarchies of race, class, gender, and geography mobilized within intimate, co-ethnic networks to legitimize labor exploitation? Drawing on the case of Peruvian migrants in São Paulo’s artisanal workshops—spaces that double as homes and workplaces—I argue that exploitation is underpinned by a distinctly gendered mechanism: the instrumentalization of affective ties. Combining the lenses of the coloniality of power (Quijano, 2000) and the coloniality of gender (Lugones, 2008), I propose the notion of an unwritten “affective contract” that anchors inequality, particularly for Indigenous women. Based on biographical interviews, the analysis unfolds in four parts: (a) recruitment processes and the dynamics of dependent mobilities; (b) intimacy as a gendered mechanism of labor control; (c) the role of affective contracts in shaping labor relations; and (d) the blurring of family and work boundaries. The article extends coloniality theory by tracing its intimate, gendered micro-mechanisms and contributes to migration studies by showing how kinship and paisano networks reproduce historical inequalities in South–South migration. |
| Date: | 2026–05–05 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:socarx:e6cpd_v1 |
| By: | Allisson, François; Chassonnery-Zaïgouche, Cléo |
| Abstract: | Maurice Dobb’s Wages, a short textbook-style work commissioned by John Maynard Keynes for the Cambridge Economic Handbooks series, was first published in 1928. It went through six revised editions by 1959, along with numerous reprints and translations up to the 1980s. This paper analyses the evolution of the book’s content in order to question the status of economic theory in relation to the study of labour issues. The first section examines the making of the handbook and shows how Wages addressed the usefulness of economic theory, particularly price theory. The second section traces the evolution of Dobb’s views on wages, shaped by his controversy with John Hicks in the late 1920s and early 1930s. The third section explores the growing scepticism of Wages across its subsequent editions and translations, following its trajectory from the centre to the periphery of economics. |
| Keywords: | Dobb (Maurice); textbook; wages; labour economics; wage theory |
| JEL: | B13 B24 J30 |
| Date: | 2026–05–08 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:138374 |
| By: | Steininger, L. E. |
| Abstract: | In this essay, I study a hitherto neglected yet central complicity between the reigning logics of monetary governance and heteronormativity. In so doing, my analysis exposes hegemonic assumptions in IPE that often remain unchallenged. Drawing on queer-feminist scholarship, I first argue that heteronormativity is premised on the ideologically conservative claim that gender identity and associated language (abstraction) must be grounded in, and ontologically preceded by, a material biological sex (‘essence’). I then demonstrate that a strikingly similar structure underpins the Monetarist inflation form – defined as an imbalance between the quantity of money (abstraction) and the quantity of goods or services (‘essence’). Employing this homology makes visible how central bank inflation-targeting regimes enact gendered norms that devalue femininely coded domains and cast gender equality as both politically destabilizing and economically unfeasible. This essay seeks to queer monetary policy by highlighting the intersections between gendered ontology and IPE, contributing to the literature on anti-essentialism and demand management. Finally, I propose a non-essentialist approach to price stability, which I intend to develop further in future work. |
| Keywords: | anti-essentialism; gender; heteronormativity; inflation; monetarism; price stability |
| JEL: | A14 B54 E31 E58 |
| Date: | 2026–03–30 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:137946 |
| By: | Kabeer, Naila; Plomien, Ania |
| JEL: | N0 |
| Date: | 2026–04 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:138143 |
| By: | Wojdan Omran (Queen's Business School); Shumaila Yousafzai (Nazarbayev University Graduate School of Business) |
| Abstract: | This study advances a decolonial understanding of women's entrepreneurship in the Global South by synthesizing how women entrepreneurs resist and navigate patriarchal constraints through infrapolitical strategies. It introduces infrapolitics as a critical lens to theorize subtle, informal, and contextually embedded acts of resistance that often remain overlooked in mainstream entrepreneurship literature. |
| Keywords: | Infrapolitics, Strategic disobedience, Quiet activism, Women entrepreneurs, Palestine, Patriarchy, Bricolage, Islamic feminism, Global South, Systematic Literature Review, Decolonial theory |
| Date: | 2025–08 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:asx:nugsbw:2025-11 |
| By: | Sebastian Benthall; Alan Lujan |
| Abstract: | We present two new classes of causal models of decision-making agents. Our approach is motivated by the needs of modeling the economics of computing systems. These systems are composed of subsystems and can exhibit endogenous limits on cognitive resources and value discounting. Structural Causal Decision Models (SCDMs) expand on Structural Causal Influence Models. Like SCIMs, they explicitly represent the causal relationships between model variables and the payoffs of agent decisions. Additionally, agent decisions can be constrained by their causal antecedents, and SCDMs can have open root variables for which no probability distribution or structural equation is given. We show that SCDMs have a well-defined and computationally useful property of composability. Building on SCDMs, we then define a Structural Causal Decision Process (SCDP) as a recurring SCDM with a discount variable. SCDPs benefit from the useful composition properties of SCDMs. Moreover, SCDPs are strictly more expressive than POMDPs because they do not assume rational belief formation. Indeed, an SCDP can endogenously model the memory-formation process, and is thus useful for modeling resource rational agents in dynamic settings. SCDPs are also capable of modeling variable discounting, a tool used widely in social scientific modeling. We pose that SCDPs are a useful framework for policy simulation for the digital economy, mechanism design for information systems, and digital twin modeling of cyberinfrastructure. |
| Date: | 2026–05 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2605.02681 |
| By: | Snower, Dennis; Thomas, Margo (Women's Economic Imperative) |
| Abstract: | The article argues that the erosion of the postwar rules-based order is giving rise to a new, networked form of colonialism, characterized by extraction, asymmetry, and transactional power. Unlike classical empire, this "new colonialism" operates through digital infrastructures, financial systems, and geopolitical influence rather than direct territorial control. The authors interpret these dynamics as a pathological concentration of agency that undermines human flourishing. They propose "recoupling" collective capacities with collective challenges—through distributed agency, coalition-based governance, and multidimensional wellbeing metrics—as a pathway toward a more inclusive, post-colonial global order. |
| Date: | 2026–04 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:amz:wpaper:2026-11 |
| By: | Heng-fu Zou (The World Bank, Washington, D. C., 20433, USA) |
| Abstract: | This paper argues that Francis Fukuyama's end-of-history thesis no longer provides an adequate framework for understanding the contemporary world. In place of liberal convergence, the twenty-first century has revealed the return of great-power rivalry, civilizational self-assertion, strategic rearmament, and competing projects of world order. To explain this transformation, the paper develops a composite framework drawing on Hobbes, Schmitt, Nietzsche, and the Chinese idea of Tianxia. Hobbes clarifes the structure of insecurity in a world without a common superior power. Schmitt clarifies sovereignty, decision, and the renewed centrality of political enmity. Nietzsche clarifies rank, command, greatness, decadence, and the production of higher civilizational types. Tianxia expands the analysis beyond the Roman-Western horizon by introducing a broader imagination of world order grounded in civilizational totality. On this basis, the paper offers a comparative interpretation of China, Rome, Spain, Britain, Russia, the United States, Iran, Japan, India, and Vietnam as distinct but interacting forms of imperial or civilizational power. Its central claim is that modernity has not abolished empire or grandeur. It has multiplied their forms. The present age is therefore better understood not as the end of history, but as the return of history in a more openly Hobbesian, Schmittian, Nietzschean, and civilizationally plural world. |
| Keywords: | Nietzsche; Tianxia; Fukuyama; Hobbes; Carl Schmitt; empire; civilizational state; great-power rivalry; world order; Rome; China; America; Russia; political theology; realism; end of history |
| JEL: | B15 F51 F52 P16 N40 |
| Date: | 2026–05 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cuf:wpaper:809 |
| By: | Toma\v{z} Fleischman; Ethan Buchman |
| Abstract: | Current post-trade clearing systems rely almost exclusively on cash or cash-like collateral, leaving vast reserves of short-term liquidity embedded in trade credit outside formal settlement infrastructures. A key barrier to integrating this liquidity is the near-universal dependence of clearing services on novation, which imposes institutional overhead that restricts accessibility and limits the range of obligations that can be brought into settlement. This paper introduces the Cycles Protocol: a distributed, multilateral clearing mechanism based on double-entry accounting and atomic cycle execution that maximizes balance sheet compression. Unlike novation-based clearing, Cycles does not redistribute counterparty risk; it can thus be applied generally to existing financial networks, without any change in counterparty relations, allowing it to complement existing clearing systems and Central Counterparties (CCPs). By representing commitments as edges on a unified directed graph, Cycles surfaces liquidity hiding within existing network structure. We focus here on two applications of Cycles to deepening secondary market liquidity: first, as a compression layer between existing clearing participants and CCPs; and second, as a means to incorporate the liquidity of the trade credit network into formal settlement, extending market clearing beyond financial obligations and into real-economy financing. |
| Date: | 2026–05 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2605.02436 |
| By: | Koppelman, Carter |
| Abstract: | Using gender-targeted housing subsidies, Brazil’s Minha Casa Minha Vida (MCMV) program has significantly expanded homeownership among low-income women. However, the latter often face unexpectedly high costs upon becoming homeowners. While existing research shows that burdensome housing costs have adverse socio-economic impacts on beneficiaries of MCMV and similar subsidy programs, this article looks ethnographically at their gendered and disciplinary effects. Drawing on participant observation and interviews in an MCMV-subsidized housing estate in São Paulo, it reveals three effects of cost-burdened homeownership. First, high costs produced deep anxieties and necessitated new budgeting and income-generating practices, augmenting homeowners’ existing burdens of paid and unpaid labor. Second, management of housing costs was experienced as a specifically gendered burden, conferred on women by an avowedly ‘pro-female’ state policy. Third, rather than critique MCMV for imposing high costs, women invoked maternalist state discourses to frame payment as a legitimate obligation that made them respectable citizens and responsible mothers. Bridging the feminist sociology of welfare states with recent work on the disciplinary role of housing policy, this study reveals how programs promoting women’s homeownership can both expand and legitimize unequal gendered burdens. |
| Keywords: | housing costs; homeownership; social housing; citizenship; gender; Brazil |
| JEL: | R21 R38 I38 J16 D12 |
| Date: | 2026–04–24 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:138131 |
| By: | João Carlos Lopes |
| Abstract: | The great recession of 2008/2009 and the subsequent sovereign debt crisis highlighted the existence of deep structural imbalances in the Eurozone: large differences of competitiveness and growth potential between its northern (core) and southern (peripheral) countries. In this paper, an input-output approach is used to study two important facets of this phenomenon, namely the nexus between current account (trade) imbalances and domestic (final) demand levels, as well as the sectoral specialization of tradable goods and services production. In the uncompetitive (current account deficit) economies of southern euro area, domestic final demand levels before the crisis were excessive and the opposite occurred in the strong, competitive economies of the north. These external imbalances were closely associated with a pattern of specialization favourable to the northern euro area countries (sectors with higher value added and more intensive technological activities). The empirical results of the paper for the period before the crisis, are based on input-output tables for several years: 1995, 2000, 2005 and 2011, available in the World Input Output Database. The northern euro area group is formed by Germany, Netherlands Finland and Ireland. The southern one is the so-called GIPS group (Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain). After the (Troika) adjustment programs of 2011/2014, the external imbalances were overcome, by a strong demand compression initially and an export led orientation thereafter. This correction is shown for the Portuguese case, using 2013 and 2017 inputoutput tables for this country and a comparison is made with Germany, the reference country of the core Eurozone group. |
| Keywords: | Trade imbalances; Domestic demand; Export composition; Input-output linkages; Eurozone; Portugal. |
| JEL: | F40 C67 D57 |
| Date: | 2026–05 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ise:remwps:wp04162026 |
| By: | Quinn, Joseph M (University of South Carolina); Barron, Valerie K. |
| Abstract: | Inequalities in the classroom often reflect broader societal biases and prejudices, in part because they are reproduced through everyday interactions amongst students and instructors. Students in groups make rapid judgments about who is competent, who should lead, and who can be ignored. These judgments can map onto status distinctions like race and gender, turning active learning groups into sites that reify rather than challenge broader inequalities. Researchers and practitioners often look to intergroup contact theory (IGCT) when designing interventions to reduce prejudice in the classroom. The theory proposes that contact between different groups is most effective under conditions of equal status, common goals, cooperation, and institutional support. Yet these conditions are not self-executing: IGCT describes the qualities of ideal contact but does not explain the micro-level interactional mechanisms that produce such contact in classroom groups. Nor does it clearly explain when and how positive interactions between dissimilar peers may lead to more than ephemeral changes in cooperation and prejudice-reduction – that is, when intergroup exchanges may alter the status beliefs and performance expectations that students bring into future interactions beyond the classroom. Sociological theories of social commitment and status construction help clarify these processes and offer a ground-up basis for strategies that can heighten intergroup cooperation while reducing status-related biases within, and perhaps beyond, interactions in the classroom. In this article, we link the Theory of Social Commitments (TOSC) and Status Construction Theory (SCT) to IGCT to show how instructors can reorganize intergroup contact through intentional learning group composition, interdependent tasks, and feedback that both rewards cooperation and makes bias-disconfirming competence observable. |
| Date: | 2026–05–06 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:socarx:yw963_v1 |
| By: | Naohiro Yoshida |
| Abstract: | This paper proposes a simple and parsimonious discrete-time simulation model to describe the endogenous formation and periodic collapse of financial bubbles. While existing literature has extensively explored the statistical properties of locally explosive bubble dynamics, capturing the micro-level interplay of investor herd behavior and panic selling within a unified framework remains a challenge. Our model addresses this by introducing a cubic function of market momentum to determine the balance of trading directions. This mechanism drives both trend-following behavior during the bubble phase and sudden market crashes when the momentum exceeds a critical threshold. Furthermore, inspired by the self-exciting nature of the Hawkes process, the model endogenizes``market frenzy" by linking trading frequency directly to the accumulated momentum. Simulation results demonstrate that this minimal setup successfully replicates the complex, nonlinear dynamics of bubbles, including simultaneous surges in liquidity and price, followed by dramatic crashes. |
| Date: | 2026–04 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2605.00854 |
| By: | Mahmut Zeki Akarsu; Moamen Gouda |
| Abstract: | This study examines how constitutionally embedded Islamic economic principles – declarations of an “Islamic Economy Provision, ” “Islamic Alms/Zakat Provision, ” and “Islamic Riba Provision” – affect income inequality in OIC (Organisation of Islamic Cooperation) countries over the period 1980–2019. Using novel disaggregated constitutional data (Gouda, 2026) merged with World Inequality Database measures, we estimate correlated random-effects panel models with Driscoll–Kraay standard errors. The results reveal heterogeneous post-2011 Arab Spring effects. Broad economy declarations and Islamic alms/zakat provisions are associated with higher top-10 and top-1 income shares and compressed middle and bottom shares in Arab states, suggesting elite capture in rentier contexts. By contrast, riba prohibitions reduce Gini coefficients and increase bottom-50 income shares across OIC countries. In non-Arab OIC countries, Islamic economy and alms provisions are associated with more egalitarian outcomes. The findings show that constitutional provisions operate as autonomous distributional forces, but their effects are mediated by textual specificity, implementation capacity, and political context. The policy implication is that enforceable institutional mechanisms are more likely than symbolic constitutional commitments to translate Islamic egalitarian norms into redistribution. |
| Keywords: | Islamic constitutions, income inequality, Zakat, Riba prohibition, OIC countries |
| JEL: | D31 K10 P48 Z12 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_12657 |