Actors weigh short-term economic gains vs. long-term relational survival.
Some strategies prioritize avoiding betrayal even at a loss.
Others invest in "forgiveness buffers" (e.g., generous credit terms) to preserve zone position.
This allows modeling of asymmetric patience, sacrifice strategies, or delayed retaliation, commonly seen in real-world economic diplomacy, cooperative ventures, or founder-investor dynamics.
D. Strategic Ambiguity as Economic Capital
Ambiguity in intentions---often viewed as noise in rational models---is here understood as a deliberate strategic asset. Actors may signal uncertainty or partial commitment to:
Keep rivals off-balance.
Invite exploratory trust.
Conceal real red lines.
Our framework models this via zone blur functions, reflecting how ambiguity is perceived across zones. For instance, a "maybe" from a Green-Zone partner may be read generously, while the same word from a Yellow-Zone actor may increase suspicion.
Why Complexity and Adaptivity are Essential Now
In an era of:
Fragile global supply chains,
Multipolar trade alliances,
Investor-startup trust crises,
Local economic cooperation amidst national fragmentation,
there is urgent demand for a model that mirrors the actual texture of economic relationships---not as instantaneous utility optimizations, but as organic, evolving, emotionally-mediated, and historically-laden interactions. The Relational Zone Economics framework provides the scaffolding for such a model.
It integrates lessons from:
Complexity science,
Game theory,
Behavioral economics,
Social network theory,
Trauma-informed relational models,
to create a next-generation economic theory fit for the nonlinear, trust-contingent world we actually inhabit.
CHAPTER 1. Introduction
A. The Urgency of Expanding Toward Adaptive Relational Economic Theory
