|
on Heterodox Microeconomics |
|
Issue of 2026–08–31
thirteen papers chosen by Carlo D’Ippoliti, Università degli Studi di Roma “La Sapienza” |
| By: | Alessandro Roncaglia (Sapienza University of Rome) |
| Abstract: | Adam Smith's political economy is best understood as part of a broader inquiry into human beings and society, rather than as a narrow theory of market self-regulation. This paper situates The Wealth of Nations within Smith's wider intellectual project, including his writings on moral philosophy, rhetoric, jurisprudence, and scientific method. It emphasizes the complementarity between self-interest and sympathy, the centrality of the division of labor to Smith's theory of economic development, and the role of institutions, justice, and public action in sustaining commercial society. The paper also revisits Smith's theories of value, prices, distribution, and competition, arguing against interpretations that assimilate Smith to modern general equilibrium theory or reduce the "invisible hand" to a doctrine of automatic market optimality. Smith emerges instead as a theorist of social interdependence, historical development, and institutional complexity. |
| Keywords: | Adam Smith; classical political economy; Scottish Enlightenment; division of labor; sympathy; self-interest; value theory; competition; invisible hand; history of economic thought |
| JEL: | B12 B31 B41 D46 D6 D01 E6 K21 L4 |
| Date: | 2026–05–25 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:thk:wpaper:inetwp251 |
| By: | Dieter F. Kogler; Keungoui Kim |
| Abstract: | Evolutionary Economic Geography (EEG) has become a central perspective within contemporary Economic Geography by explaining how regions, cities, industries, firms, technologies, and institutions evolve over historical time. This chapter introduces EEG’s intellectual foundations in evolutionary economics, Schumpeterian ideas of innovation and creative destruction, and geographical debates on uneven development, path dependence, and regional transformation. It reviews the field’s core conceptual contributions around history, novelty, complexity, emergence, and adaptability, and shows how these ideas have informed empirical research on related variety, regional branching, technological knowledge spaces, networks, resilience, path development, institutions, and policy. The chapter argues that EEG is best understood not as a closed paradigm, but as an evolving and plural research programme. Its future relevance depends on explaining not only how inherited capabilities shape regional trajectories, but also how capabilities, relatedness, and path dependence are produced, activated, selected, contested, and transformed. In doing so, EEG offers a powerful framework for understanding how economic landscapes inherit the past, generate novelty, and confront uncertain spatial, technological, social, and ecological futures. |
| Keywords: | Evolutionary Economic Geography; Regional Diversification; Path Dependence; Knowledge Spaces; Uneven Development |
| JEL: | R11 O33 O18 |
| Date: | 2026–08 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:egu:wpaper:2619 |
| By: | Han Chu; Jingxuan Gui; Robert Hassink; Xiaomian Dai |
| Abstract: | Since its launch in 2006, evolutionary economic geography (EEG) has been successfully expanding into the main paradigm of economic geography proper. Such rapid expansion of a paradigm might have negative consequences, as it can potentially lead to conceptual and paradigmatic stretching. Such stretching can lead to the dilution of the original paradigmatic meanings and hence fuzziness, weakening explanatory power. With the help of a bibliometric analysis and literature review, this study maps the expansion and evolutionary trajectory of EEG, examines whether this expansion predominantly takes the form of stretching or the more cumulative processes of focusing and extension, and identifies the substantive characteristics of these three forms of paradigmatic evolution. We find that EEG remains a highly vibrant paradigm: most of its literature contributes through focusing and extension by consolidating or further developing its theoretical mechanisms. Stretching has increased but remains less prominent. |
| Keywords: | evolutionary economic geography, paradigm, expansion, focusing, extension, stretching |
| Date: | 2026–08 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:egu:wpaper:2617 |
| By: | Alejandro, Audrey (London School of Economics and Political Science); Meibauer, Gustav |
| Abstract: | What conceptions of ‘the social’ underpin International Relations (IR) theories? Despite the growing engagement of IR scholarship with ‘the social’ dimensions of international politics, the concept remains surprisingly under-specified. Existing debates are theoretically rich but fragmented, offering limited guidance for understanding how different traditions conceptualise the social or how these assumptions are transmitted through the pedagogical accounts of the discipline encountered by students. This article argues that IR theories are underpinned by distinct yet often implicit conceptions of the social that function as unacknowledged ontological commitments. We develop a typology of six conceptions of the social grounded in social theory—functionalist, Marxist, rational choice, systems-theoretical, structuralist, and poststructuralist—and use it to re-read the traditions through which students most commonly encounter the discipline, from liberalism and neorealism to constructivism and critical approaches. We then trace how these conceptions have been reproduced and transformed through the discipline’s pedagogical canon taking widely assigned IR textbooks as our pedagogical point of departure. We show that the coexistence of heterogeneous conceptions renders the social both ubiquitous and under-specified, generating analytical and pedagogical ambiguities. By making these assumptions explicit, the article offers students, teachers, and scholars a clearer vocabulary for analysing, teaching, and debating IR theory. |
| Date: | 2026–08–21 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:socarx:8yef7_v1 |
| By: | Wenli Cheng |
| Abstract: | This paper develops a Stock-Flow Consistent (SFC) model to analyze the macroeconomic effects of investment and saving decisions. The model explicitly represents the monetary circuit: money is created when the Bank issues loans to finance production; it circulates the economy through transactions between firms and households; and is destroyed when firms repay their loans with sales revenue. The stationary state is a monetary equilibrium in which the flow of credit, income, and expenditure is synchronized with the flow of inputs, goods and services. We examine three transitional experiments. First, in a capital expansion scenario, we show that when a firm invests, real resources are redirected from consumption to capital formation, compelling households to reduce consumption and accumulate capital wealth. This is real saving. At the same time, the expenditure on capital goods generates new income that cannot be spent on consumption goods (priced at cost) and must therefore be saved. This is monetary saving. Investment thus creates both the real and monetary saving needed to finance it. Second, we investigate two variants of the Paradox of Thrift. In the first, the firm maintains its capital stock in anticipation of recovery, and the contraction proves temporary. In the second, the firm reduces its capital stock, leading to a permanent decline in output and household incomes. The results suggest a fundamental asymmetry: investment creates the saving needed to finance it, whereas households saving does not automatically convert to investment. In the absence of corresponding investment, saving can lead to reduced output and income. The findings also highlight the critical role of firm expectations in determining the long- run consequences of saving shocks. |
| Keywords: | Stock-Flow Consistent Models, Monetary Circuit, Investment-Created Savings, Paradox of Thrift, Business Cycles, Transitional Dynamic |
| JEL: | E12 E21 E22 E25 E32 |
| Date: | 2026–08–01 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:mos:moswps:paper_1786924004436_190 |
| By: | Adi Weidenfeld; Tom Broekel; Nick Clifton |
| Abstract: | The Regional Innovation Systems (RIS) framework explains regional innovation performance primarily through structural conditions and external knowledge flows. While this perspective has generated influential typologies and policy models, it offers limited insight into how RISs emerge and transform from within. This paper advances a dynamic perspective that conceptualises RIS development as a continuum from fragmented interaction to systemic integration. We argue that generative network mechanisms and systemic dimensions co-evolve recursively, enabling or constraining the formation of integrated RISs. By shifting attention from static structures to self-reinforcing dynamics, the framework provides a foundation for understanding RIS formation, transformation, and reversibility, and suggests a more adaptive, mechanism-oriented approach to policy. |
| Keywords: | regional knowledge networks, regional innovation systems, network evolution, evolutionary economic geography, institutions |
| Date: | 2026–08 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:egu:wpaper:2614 |
| By: | Franken, Jason; Cornett, Evan; Grashuis, Jasper; Mukembo, Stephen |
| Abstract: | Given the decreasing number of cooperatives in the U.S. between 2017 and 2022, this study conducts a competing risk survival analysis on confidential data from the USDA1 to examine two exit types: mergers and acquisitions (M&A) and liquidations and dissolutions (L&D). By applying the Fine and Gray method and cumulative incidence analyses, the study incorporates two time scales—time-to-event and time-underobservation— to estimate determinants of the two exit pathways. This research demonstrates that failure in agricultural cooperatives is a complex process shaped by leverage, profitability, scale, and exogenous shocks. M&A represents a strategic decision for survival or growth, while L&D predominantly represents the failure of small and unprofitable cooperatives. |
| Keywords: | Agribusiness |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:aaea26:404316 |
| By: | Vidal, Florian; Halloy, José (Université Paris Cité) |
| Abstract: | This article analyses the contemporary international system through a pluridisciplinary lens integrating imperial history, complex systems theory, and Earth system science. Situated within the dynamics of the Anthropocene, it reconceptualizes contemporary great-power competition by examining socio-technical systems (STS) predicated on the intensive consumption of fossil fuels and mineral resources. We posit that the prevailing STS metabolic regime is unsustainable in the long term, owing to the significant constraints imposed by geological and planetary boundaries. These limitations will become increasingly pronounced as the effects of the systemic crisis intensify. This regime not only perpetuates imperialist logics, visible in rivalries over resources essential for technological dominance, but also generates a ‘zombified’ technosphere that actively disrupts Earth system processes and jeopardizes planetary habitability. The article consequently advocates for de-imperialism as an essential trajectory, requiring a shift to networked and systemic geopolitics via the active dismantling of imperial structures. |
| Date: | 2026–05–31 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:socarx:q53np_v1 |
| By: | Gershuny, Jonathan |
| Abstract: | This addresses two issues within the System of National Accounts which remain unresolved in its 2025 revision. (1) The SNA excludes most final production by and intended for private households, even though technical change often involves transfer of productive tasks out of the money economy and into these, or similar, small enterprises. And (2) it fails to distinguish between final output at the General Production Boundary, and other unintended, individual or collective outcomes of economic activity. Both problems relate to the inadequate conceptualisation of final consumption, which is required to complement Reid’s (1934) “3rd person” definition of production. SNA 2025 recommends the construction of “extended accounts” using prices of analogous commodities in the money economy to “shadow” those from outside the money nexus—but these do not exhaust the full range of non-money production and consumption. |
| Keywords: | System of National Accounts (SNA); Extended accounts; Non-market production; Household production; Time-use surveys |
| JEL: | D13 E01 H41 I31 Q56 |
| Date: | 2025–10–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:eoe:escoed:escoe-dp-2025-13 |
| By: | Gillan, Brodie; Spowage, Mairi; Crummey, Ciara |
| Abstract: | The UK voluntary sector - including charities, social enterprises, cooperatives and volunteers - plays a vital role in the national economy. It supports essential public services such as health and social care, contributes to employment and skills development, drives innovation in local communities, and generates significant economic value through volunteering and fundraising. However, its economic contribution is currently underrepresented in official statistics. The Non-Profit Institutions Serving Households (NPISH) sector within the UK National Account gives us only a subsection of the full voluntary sector as many organisations are excluded from NPISH because they earn income through trading or fall outside strict definitional criteria. This discussion paper explores how improving the measurement of NPISH can lay the groundwork for developing a voluntary sector satellite account; a supplementary statistical framework that would provide a more accurate, holistic view of the voluntary sector’s role in the UK economy. |
| Keywords: | Voluntary sector; Non-profit institutions; NPISH (Non-Profit Institutions Serving Households). Satellite accounts; Extended accounts; National accounts |
| JEL: | C82 E01 L3 |
| Date: | 2025–12–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:eoe:escoed:escoe-dp-2025-20 |
| By: | Syring, Kenneth |
| Abstract: | This paper introduces the theoretical constructs of predatism and predocracy to describe an emerging authoritarian ideology and its corresponding mode of governance. Predatism is defined as a convergent far-right ideology from the fusion of white nationalism, male supremacism, Christian nationalism, anti-democratic populism, and online conspiracy subcultures into an increasingly unified worldview. This consolidation is argued to be uniquely catalyzed by the contemporary digital ecosystem, in which the dynamics of moral contagion confer a systematic transmission advantage on predator-prey framings, accelerating the migration of disparate fringe conspiracy theories and hate ideologies into the political mainstream. Within this context, distinct grievances coalesce around a shared moral logic, in which the in-group views itself as the collective victim of status theft, justifying a predatory social dynamic which celebrates cruelty and domination as both a righteous self-defense and a seek-to-destroy offense. When this movement captures state institutions, it establishes a predocracy: a system characterized by visible cruelty as a tool of rule, the weaponization of law against opponents, systemic impunity for the in-group, and the spectacular reinforcement of hierarchy through routine public displays of domination. By distinguishing predatism from classical fascism, this paper argues that predocracy is a distinct 21st-century phenomenon driven by the affective mobilization of its online base, the gamification of state violence, and the consumption of out-group anguish as in-group catharsis. |
| Date: | 2026–08–08 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:socarx:fptmb_v1 |
| By: | Tommaso Luzzati; J. Christopher Proctor; S. D'Alessandro |
| Abstract: | About a century ago, Keynes predicted that, thanks to technological progress, today's working week would be reduced to 15 hours. In practice, however, large technological gains seem to have been offset by a substantial shortening of product lifespans. From a standard microeconomic perspective, this is inefficient as more labour and material resources are employed than necessary to deliver a given level of product-provided services. In this paper, we model policies aimed at reducing the current 'throwaway economy' as inducing a positive productivity shock in one economic sector and examine the conditions under which this shock's propagation to other sectors can allow for a reduction in working time, without reducing consumers' well-being, labour compensation, or profits. To this purpose, we first focus on a stylized three sector |
| Date: | 2026–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2607.28371 |
| By: | Ean Lay, Sam; Phon, Sophat; Som, Vuddneath; Lum, Sothearak |
| Abstract: | This study assesses whether the central Bank in Cambodia’s (NBC) cash circulation system can support its goals of expanding riel use and sustaining trust as Bakong scales. While functional, the system faces gaps in rural access, data, analytics, and public education. Comparative evidence suggests current infrastructure is insufficient for de‑dollarization at the pace NBC projects. Theoretically, the review shows that currency substitution depends on governance capacity, not macroeconomic conditions alone; extends lifecycle models to integrate digital and physical currency governance; and provides a case of CBDC deployment preceding mature cash systems. Practically, comparator cases highlight lessons in data use (U.S.), resilience (Sweden), rural access (Brazil), and counterfeit defence (South Africa). Scenario analysis indicates riel circulation could reach mid‑thirties by 2034 under current policy, or half under sustained reform. Cambodia’s position—building infrastructure deliberately rather than inheriting legacy systems—offers a unique advantage for monetary sovereignty. |
| Keywords: | Central Bank, Sovereignty, Banking System |
| JEL: | B30 B4 B40 B5 G1 G15 K0 K00 |
| Date: | 2026–08–06 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:130364 |