AI agents embedded in humanitarian logistics or NGO coordination can adapt relational strategies across donors, beneficiaries, and local partners based on fluctuating trust, vision, or alignment zones.
4. Technical Pathways and Design Considerations
Zone-based ontologies can be embedded into large language models (LLMs) or multi-agent reinforcement learning environments.
Relational memory functions can be implemented through episodic memory layers.
Integration with affective computing and sentiment analysis can enable perception of zone shifts based on language, tone, and behavioral patterns.
Cross-validation using longitudinal economic case studies (from Section 6.B) allows simulation fidelity and real-world relevance.
Conclusion
The integration of RZE with relational AI agents opens a critical frontier in economic technology. It transforms AI agents from mechanistic optimizers to relationally intelligent collaborators, capable of:
Understanding and influencing multi-stakeholder dynamics.
Navigating moral and strategic ambiguity.
Supporting relational well-being and institutional resilience across complex, evolving economic ecosystems.
This lays the groundwork for next-generation AI in economics: empathetic, zone-aware, and strategically adaptive---reshaping how economies interact, grow, and sustain collective value.
CHAPTER 7. Theoretical Contributions
A. Challenging the Canon of Narrow Rationality
A central contribution of the Relational Zone Economics (RZE) framework is its fundamental challenge to the long-standing economic assumption of narrow rationality---the idea that agents consistently act to maximize individual utility based on clear preferences and information.
While this assumption undergirds foundational models from Nash Equilibrium to utility theory in both neoclassical and game-theoretic paradigms, it has repeatedly struggled to account for the complexity of real-world human behavior. Economic agents often:
Prioritize relational harmony over immediate gain.
Remain in ambiguous partnerships despite evident inefficiencies.
Exhibit altruism, loyalty, betrayal, or forgiveness in patterns that defy standard rational choice models.
RZE offers a structurally different lens---one that relationalizes rationality and embeds it in the temporal, ethical, and socio-psychological terrain of actual economic life.
1. From Homo Economicus to Homo Relationalis
Instead of the atomistic, calculative actor (homo economicus), RZE posits the agent as homo relationalis---an entity whose economic behavior is embedded in dynamic webs of:
