New Economic Paradigm
What is a new economic paradigm and how can it provide a conceptual and analytical foundation for global policymaking?
We urgently require new economic paradigms to deliver shared prosperity for the 21st century. Our current economic paradigms and policy frameworks are ill-equipped to tackle the ‘polycrisis’ of challenges that we are facing.
Inequality, climate breakdown, biodiversity loss, geopolitical and financial instability are demanding new ways of rethinking the economy.
Our Working Group
Co-Chairs
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David Sloan Wilson is president of ProSocial World and SUNY Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Biology and Anthropology at Binghamton University. He applies evolutionary theory to all aspects of humanity in addition to the rest of life, through ProSocial World and in his own research and writing. A complete archive of his work is available at www.David SloanWilson.world. His most recent books include his first novel, Atlas Hugged: The Autobiography of John Galt III, and a memoir, A Life Informed by Evolution.
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Dennis Snower is Honorary Professor and Co-President of The New Alignment programme for G20 policy advice at the UCL Institute for Global Prosperity (IGP). He specialises in macroeconomics and labour theory and policy, digital governance and social economics. He is currently working on a new economic paradigm based on human sociality. Professor Dennis Snower is also the Founding President and a Fellow of the Global Solutions Initiative, Berlin; Professorial Fellow at the Institute for New Economic Thinking, Oxford University; and Non-resident Fellow at Brookings.
Latest work
JOURNAL ARTICLE
Human Flourishing from a Complex Adaptive System Perspective: Exploring the Wellbeing of Social Groups as Emergent Entities
Can qualities of wellbeing and flourishing be meaningfully applied at the level of the social group, not merely as an aggregation of the wellbeing or flourishing of its members, but on its own terms as an emergent entity? This paper proposes that this is indeed the case, over three sections.
POLICY BRIEF
From Market Correction to System Design: What the Multilevel Paradigm Means for Policymakers
This policy brief argues the multilevel paradigm provides a coherent alternative for policymakers. It reconceptualizes the economy as a complex adaptive system evolving through variation, selection, and transmission across multiple levels of organization (individuals, groups, institutions). For policymakers, this shift is not merely theoretical. It redefines what policy is, how it works, and what success looks like.
BLOG
The Emotional Roots of Economic Paradigms
Economic theories endure because they make the world feel coherent, even when inaccurate — understanding this explains why paradigm change is hard.
WORKING PAPER
Measuring What Matters: A Systematic Review of Social Service Coverage in Beyond-GDP Indicators
The Beyond-GDP movement has produced sophisticated frameworks for measuring national progress, yet no systematic assessment has examined whether these frameworks adequately capture social services—the interventions through which welfare states improve citizens’ lives. This paper addresses that gap through meta-analysis of 66 Beyond-GDP indicators developed between 1972 and 2023, mapped against a 22-domain taxonomy using keyword-based content analysis with whole-word matching.
BLOG
Cultural Evolution and a New Economy for the 21st Century
Why a new economy needs cultural evolution, local action and a break from old orthodoxies
BLOG
Social Science Paradigms as Evolutionary Selection Environments
Social science paradigms don’t just explain society — they shape it, acting as selection environments for institutions and behavior
WORKING PAPER
The Multilevel Paradigm From Four Perspectives
This working paper develops the multilevel paradigm as a unifying framework for understanding economic systems as complex, adaptive, and embedded within social, political, and environmental domains. It contrasts this paradigm with the mechanistic, equilibrium-based foundations of mainstream economics and elaborates its implications across four stakeholder perspectives: researchers, policymakers, business leaders, and civil society.