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on Heterodox Microeconomics |
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Issue of 2026–09–28
sixteen papers chosen by Carlo D’Ippoliti, Università degli Studi di Roma “La Sapienza” |
| By: | Sergio Cesaratto |
| Abstract: | Students of ancient societies critical of New Institutional Economics (NIE) seem ineAective or intimidated in expressing a full alternative to its current hegemony. Yet a conceptual ghost continues to haunt many works in this field: that of economic surplus. The notion of social surplus is indeed distinctive of the classical economists’ approach, continued by Marx, and more recently revived by Piero SraAa and Pierangelo Garegnani, after having been ‘submerged and forgotten’ by the Marginalist revolution of the late Ninetieth century. This paper builds upon the familiarity that students of precapitalist societies have with the concept of surplus to delineate a robust economic alternative to NIE. After a brief presentation of the surplus approach, the paper examines some motives of unsatisfaction with NIE and with some more recent mainstream studies of the onset of inequality we label ‘marginalist materialism’. The criticism Karl Polanyi has moved to the surplus approach is then constructively reconsidered. The paper underlines the bidirectionality of the interest in communication between economic history studies and surplus theory. |
| Keywords: | Surplus Approach, Marginalism, New Institutional Economics, Samuel Bowles, Sraffa, Marginism Jel Classification: A12, B51, B52, N01, Z13 |
| Date: | 2026–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:usi:wpaper:946 |
| By: | Mark Setterfield (Department of Economics, New School for Social Research, USA) |
| Abstract: | According to Blecker (2027), while tariffs per se are not always and everywhere unwarranted (Blecker, 2026), the Trump tariffs will fail on their own terms. Making this argument necessitates suspending disbelief, so as to interpret the Trump tariffs as economic policy -- something that various commentators, who regard the tariffs as no more than political theatre, refuse to indulge. The argument here is that distinguishing between political chicanery and economics in this fashion involves a false dichotomy. Acknowledging the potential relationship between the two permits analysis that points towards an unpleasant political economy rationale for the Trump tariffs. |
| Keywords: | Trump tariffs, Authoritarian Neoliberalism, social structure of accumulation, capital-citizen accord |
| JEL: | B52 E02 F02 F13 P16 P51 |
| Date: | 2026–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:new:wpaper:2610 |
| By: | Tsepkov, Maksim |
| Abstract: | This meta-research is devoted to the systematization and conceptual comparison of key economic concepts that consider either the real sector and technological innovation, the financial sector, or state institutions as the fundamental drivers of economic development. Comparing traditional models is complicated by the fact that most authors focus on individual factors, ignoring complex interrelated relationships. To overcome this limitation, nine-layer scheme of the division of labor of Petr Shchedrovitsky is used as an integrative analytical framework, encompassing levels from natural resources and production technologies to knowledge accumulation institutions and monetary systems. The study spatially visualizes the theoretical perspectives of Karl Marx, R. Hilferding, V. Lenin, J. Keynes, H. Minsky, J. Schumpeter, and C. Perez, as well as those of Latin American structuralism, Japanese "knowledge capitalism, " and the Chinese school of socialism with Chinese characteristics. Positioning these concepts on a single map allows us to demonstrate their mutual complementarity at different phases of technological and financial cycles and lay the foundations for the synthesis of a comprehensive socioeconomic theory. The study also identified four main phases of technological and economic cycles, during each of which the role of the financial sector shifts from stimulating to destructive. It is shown that state and national-institutional mechanisms (the Chinese model, the Japanese J-firm) are capable of blocking the speculative separation of the ninth layer from the real sector. |
| Date: | 2026–09–22 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:socarx:c5z79_v1 |
| By: | O'Neill, Rachel; Dosekun, Simi |
| Abstract: | This paper examines the romancing of finance in and through popular financial feminisms, a transnational cultural terrain in which women claiming financial insight and expertise seek to ‘empower’ other women by sharing accessible and actionable advice. Such actors frequently promote stock market investing, claiming that engagement with financial markets represents the surest and most reliable means for women to achieve long-term financial security, alongside the various comforts and pleasures this entails. They do so, we argue, against a backdrop wherein young people generally and young women in particular are increasingly expressing disaffection with work, newly regarded in a variety of cultural registers as an unreliable love object and dubious source of feminist empowerment. Our analysis is based in 30 months of non-participatory digital immersion, tracking the social media content of an internationally dispersed cohort of prominent feminist finfluencers. We read this content through the analytic prism provided by feminist cultural studies scholarship on romance, and in so doing chart three interrelated components of the ‘romance’ popular financial feminisms engender: a baseline narrative in which investing enables women to realise an otherwise elusive ‘happily ever after’; a reparative fantasy about how women can live well under capitalism, without subservience to work or to a male partner; and ultimately a fiction about the intransigence of capitalism itself. On this basis we put forward the concept of ‘capitalist romance’, a term we use to designate a seductive, gendered reworking of ‘capitalist realism’. Where capitalism realism dictates that capitalism simply is, now and ever after, capitalist romance tells us that this ‘now’ and ‘ever after’ can be happy. |
| Keywords: | personal finance;investing;popular financial feminisms;romance;capitalist realism;capitalist romance |
| JEL: | F3 G3 |
| Date: | 2026–08–25 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:140522 |
| By: | Jan Lisicki (University of Warsaw, Faculty of Economic Sciences); Tomasz Kopczewski (University of Warsaw, Faculty of Economic Sciences) |
| Abstract: | Economic agents adapt their behavior to experience generated by interactions with other market participants. When several agents update their behavioral rules simultaneously, these adaptation processes become interdependent. We refer to this mechanism as co-adaptation. The paper develops a formal representation that separates the continuation of an agent's own rule updates from cross-agent effects on subsequent updates. In a two-agent system, mutual influence can increase the cumulative effect of an initial change and prolong the resulting adjustment process. A simple model of price adjustment between two firms shows how these effects depend on adjustment speed and the response to a competitor's price change. With more agents, interdependencies between adaptation processes form a directed network. This perspective links economic adjustment to multi-agent reinforcement learning, where learning by one agent changes the environment experienced by others, and clarifies when such non-stationarity is part of economic dynamics rather than only a computational difficulty. |
| Keywords: | economic adjustment, multi-agent reinforcement learning, adaptive learning, agent-based computational economics, co-adaptation |
| JEL: | B41 C61 C63 C73 D83 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:war:wpaper:2026-31 |
| By: | Snowdon, Christopher |
| Abstract: | The British economy is increasingly characterised by a form of 'command capitalism' in which the private sector is compelled by law to advance the political goals of the government. Targets, regulation and taxation are used by the state to encourage firms to pursue non-economic goals such as net zero, 'diversity', egalitarianism and behavioural change. The capitalist command economy is neither socialist nor neoliberal. The government does not seek to nationalise industries and run them itself. Instead, it subjects private companies to so much political interference, including price controls and quotas, that they become de facto agents of the state. The capitalist command economy gives politicians power without responsibility. The government sets out its ambitions and tasks the private sector with delivery, but a system that puts non-economic goals above productivity and forces firms to focus on issues that are not related to their business is unlikely to deliver economic growth. |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:ieadps:343991 |
| By: | Nandagiri, Rishita; Senderowicz, Leigh; Sigle-Rushton, Wendy |
| Abstract: | This special issue focuses on reproductive justice (RJ) as a framework for feminist research and activism. The introduction provides an overview of when and why the RJ framework was developed, outlines the ways it challenged and extended the way reproductive rights were understood and approached by feminist scholars and activists, and articulaties its productive potential. RJ’s relevance for identifying and responding to the breadth of rights violations taking place across the globe today can only be grasped with a firm understanding of its scope and foundational concepts, such as intersectionality. Its expanded scope, conceptual complexity, and epistemological orientation make RJ incompatible with the neoclassical rational-choice paradigm, but points of resonance with other frameworks provide possibilities for its integration and contribution both to knowledge and to the development of a feminist methodology in economics. The contributions to this special issue represent some of the first efforts to take forward this important project. |
| Keywords: | reproductive justice;intersectionality;feminist methodology;feminist economics;public policy;Reproductive justice |
| JEL: | I30 B54 J13 |
| Date: | 2025–03–31 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:127175 |
| By: | Tomasz Kopczewski (University of Warsaw, Faculty of Economic Sciences); Jan Lisicki (University of Warsaw, Faculty of Economic Sciences) |
| Abstract: | This article reconsiders equilibrium as a representation of economic order. It separates five properties often treated together—existence, uniqueness, stability, convergence, and predictability—and shows that fixed-point results in general equilibrium establish existence without guaranteeing the other four. When uniqueness, stability, convergence, or predictability fails, the relevant object of analysis may shift from a single point to an equilibrium-selection process, a regime, an adjustment path, or a distribution. The same distinction matters empirically because equilibrium is not directly observed but inferred from a maintained model and identification assumptions. We therefore distinguish two ideal-typical orientations: a solution-centred approach, which seeks an object that closes the model, and a temporal-statistical approach, which locates order in persistent patterns of dynamics and distributions. The article argues that the continued appeal of point-based equilibrium reflects its tractability and explanatory simplicity as well as its theoretical role. |
| Keywords: | equilibrium, general equilibrium, stability, nonlinear dynamics, chaos, economic methodology |
| JEL: | C62 D50 B41 B23 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:war:wpaper:2026-29 |
| By: | Syed Mohib Ali; Y.K. Kim |
| Abstract: | What are the institutional sources of aggregate demand in emerging market economies (EMEs), and how are they related to output dynamics? Building on a structuralist and post-Keynesian framework, we use sectoral national accounts to examine the institutional sources of aggregate demand and their relationship with output in EMEs. Panel regressions are used to estimate the contemporaneous relationship between sectoral balances and output, while local projections are used to examine their dynamic relationship over the medium run. In doing so, we contribute to the post-Keynesian literature on demand regimes in EMEs and the growing literature on growth models in comparative political economy. We find that the external sector plays a prominent role in medium-run output dynamics, with improvements in the current account balance associated with persistent increases in output. Government net lending is negatively associated with output over the early horizons, consistent with an important role for fiscal demand. Finally, country-level results reveal substantial heterogeneity, suggesting that household and corporate borrowing can be important sources of domestic demand in some EMEs. |
| Keywords: | Aggregate demand, Emerging market economies, Sectoral balances, Growth models |
| JEL: | E12 F32 O11 |
| Date: | 2026–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pke:wpaper:pkwp2619 |
| By: | Jean-Luc Gaffard |
| Abstract: | Partir de la théorie de l’équilibre général est une étape utile de la réflexion sur la dynamique. Certes, parce qu’elle met l’accent sur l’interdépendance des agents et des marchés. Mais c’est aussi parce que c’est en se séparant des hypothèses relatives à l’information et à la production qui la fondent qu’il devient possible de reformuler le problème de la coordination. L’enjeu est d’explorer différents sentiers hors de l’équilibre au lieu de rechercher les conditions d’existence d’un équilibre vers lequel l’économie devrait converger. Il est de comprendre à quelles conditions les déséquilibres sont maintenus dans certaines limites et de définir ainsi ce que peut être un corridor de stabilité. Au lieu de fonder la macroéconomie sur des comportements individuels d’optimisation intertemporelle, il s’agit d’établir les formes d’organisation susceptibles de concourir à la viabilité de l’évolution, ce que l’on pourrait appeler le fondement macroéconomique de la microéconomie. L’économie décrite n’est plus une économie d’échange réel, c’est une économie monétaire de production. |
| Keywords: | capital, coordination, équilibre, information, monnaie, organisation |
| JEL: | D5 D8 E14 E30 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ulp:sbbeta:2026-30 |
| By: | Eleonora Cavallaro; Corentin Roussel |
| Abstract: | This paper investigates the prudential and environmental implications of an environmentally targeted output floor. We extend an agent-based credit-network model by distinguishing brown and green non-financial corporate exposures and incorporating pollution dynamics and climate damages. We compare the standard Basel output floor with a brown output floor not applied to green non-financial corporate exposures. Both designs significantly affect banks’ Risk-Weighted Asset (RWA) densities, while the brown output floor preserves the reduction in RWA-density dispersion among IRB banks achieved by the standard regulation. Neither policy significantly contracts non-financial corporate lending, as banks adjust primarily through the interbank market. While the standard output floor is associated with significant increases in emissions and pollution relative to the no-output-floor benchmark, no statistically significant environmental deterioration emerges under the brown output floor. These results suggest that environmental targeting may reconcile prudential discipline with green-transition objectives. |
| Keywords: | Output Floor; Climate-Related Financial Risks; Green Prudential Policy; Credit Network. |
| JEL: | G21 G28 Q54 C63 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ulp:sbbeta:2026-29 |
| By: | Magdalena Grabowska (University of Warsaw, Faculty of Economic Sciences, Interdisciplinary Centre for Labour Market and Family Dynamics (LabFam)) |
| Abstract: | Rising female employment and earnings have transformed partners’ economic positions, while gender divisions in unpaid labor persist. The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted the organization of paid and unpaid work, opening a window to reassess these two dimensions within couples. Using longitudinal panel data from Poland (2021–2024), this paper examines how relative income and the division of unpaid labor relate to both life satisfaction and partner satisfaction among partnered adults. Random-effects models reveal distinct gendered patterns. For men, these dynamics are associated primarily with global life satisfaction: men report higher life satisfaction when they out-earn their partners, but substantially lower life satisfaction when they are out-earned and primarily responsible for domestic work. For women, effects concentrate in partner satisfaction: women who out-earn their partners report lower partner satisfaction when they also perform most domestic labor. These patterns hold for both housework and childcare and are observed primarily in the post-pandemic period. |
| Keywords: | relative income, unpaid labor division, subjective well-being, intra-couple income distribution, Poland |
| JEL: | I31 J12 J16 D13 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:war:wpaper:2026-28 |
| By: | Samson Gebrerufael (Department of Economics, University of Pretoria, Private Bag X20, Hatfield 0028, South Africa); Renee van Eyden (Department of Economics, University of Pretoria, Private Bag X20, Hatfield 0028, South Africa); Rangan Gupta (Department of Economics, University of Pretoria, Private Bag X20, Hatfield 0028, South Africa) |
| Abstract: | This paper empirically evaluates the technological learning trajectory models of Porcile et al. (2023) across African countries categorized into three institutional regimes: developmental (Ethiopia, Mauritius, Rwanda), conflicting claims (Ghana, Kenya, Namibia, Tunisia), and neoliberal (Seychelles, South Africa). Using panel ARDL modeling, the study investigates the impact of real effective exchange rate (REER) depreciation on technological learning-by-doing, proxied by the growth rate of export income elasticity (GIEX). The results show no significant learning effects in the developmental regime due to immediate equilibrium adjustment and insignificant coefficients of REER depreciation. The conflicting claims regime demonstrates the same results, driven by low-complexity export baskets. Conversely, the neoliberal regime achieves a relatively persistent short-lived technological learning. However, its long-run REER growth coefficient is negative, confirming that over-reliance on price competitiveness retards long-run growth per Thirlwall's law. Ultimately, state failure hinders heavy intervention regimes in Africa, whereas moving toward the neoliberal framework yields better short-run learning outcomes. |
| Keywords: | technological learning-by-doing, REER depreciation, income elasticity of exports, developmental regimes, state failure |
| JEL: | F13 F41 F14 O47 O11 O33 O30 O43 P48 |
| Date: | 2026–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pre:wpaper:202625 |
| By: | Cika, Anxhelo |
| Abstract: | 2023 was, by most accounts, the year of the girl: girl dinner, girl math, Barbenheimer, and a wave of internet culture built for and about young women. Girl math went viral for its own kind of purchase “justification”: an item worn often costs less each time you wear it, and a return is basically profit, among many more. The joke was filmed straight to camera, often with a partner or friend on hand to play the “rational, ” “financially literate” counterpart to the woman's logic. It built a community as much as it drew backlash, but nobody looked closely at what the “math” was actually doing. Drawing on mental accounting, Foucauldian and institutional perspectives on accounting, feminist and postfeminist theory, and work on accounting as a gendered practice, this paper argues that girl math is not merely an instance of Thaler's mental accounting but a form of accounting in its own right: informal, local, community-driven, and performed publicly on TikTok; separated from formal accounting not by its logic, but by who is recognised as doing the counting. |
| Keywords: | accounting;girl math;governmentality;mental accounting;postfeminism;TikTok |
| JEL: | M40 |
| Date: | 2026–08–31 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:140913 |
| By: | Shutes, Isabel |
| Abstract: | Ethical recruitment is a core principle of policy governing international labour recruitment, yet how it is constituted and violated in practice remains underexplored. This article examines the making of (un)ethical recruitment in transnational care labour markets, focusing on the international recruitment of care workers to the UK. Drawing on interviews with recruiters of care workers, it explores how recruiters understand and navigate ethical and unethical recruitment. Theoretically, the article frames unethical recruitment through the lens of market-making and the externalisation of care; empirically, it considers how the costs of care labour are externalised onto workers. Externalisation processes involve fee-charging to internationally recruited care workers, limited enforcement of ethical recruitment standards and state immigration policy itself. While some recruiters position themselves as ethical actors, upholding the rights of migrant workers, it is argued that ethical recruitment ultimately requires employers and states to bear the costs of care labour. |
| Keywords: | care;care workers;ethical recruitment;labour migration;migrant workers;recruitment |
| JEL: | R14 J01 |
| Date: | 2026–08–30 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:138949 |
| By: | Voss, Dustin |
| Abstract: | Germany is often portrayed as a country where consensus-oriented governance and close industrial coordination favour incremental policy reform. This article applies an agency lens to argue that organised capitalism provides more room for radical institutional change than is commonly acknowledged. I show how self-interested policymakers can mobilise the political and economic ties embodied in the network of organised capitalism in pursuit of their own electoral agendas to implement radical policy change. The argument is illustrated in a case of sweeping financial market reform in 1999, when the Schröder government unexpectedly repealed a tax that long represented the most significant obstacle to financial liberalisation. Media analysis and semi-structured elite interviews suggest that Schröder offered the tax reform as part of a quid pro quo with large commercial banks in a bid for his own political survival. Until then, reform efforts had been stalled over concerns of hostile takeovers and exuberant shareholder dominance. An agency lens nuances our understanding of organised capitalism (1) as a structural constraint that can drag and delay policy change for years, but also (2) as a source of political capital that entrepreneurial policymakers can mobilise to trigger far-reaching reforms. |
| Keywords: | financialisation;interest groups;political agency;cross-shareholdings;capital gains tax |
| JEL: | F3 G3 |
| Date: | 2026–09–16 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:141035 |