title: From Flatlining to the Breakaway Economy
title: What mechanisms influence individual contributions to the economy, and can the individual influence the economy as a whole?
titleType: Subtitle
Creators: name: Gasser, Christina
Publisher: name: Lancaster University
Year: 2024

description: This thesis explores the role and significance of the individual in the
 economy and produces an unexpected finding: individual decisions and
 interactions might have the power to alter the norms and even the very
 structure of the economy. Building upon previous ideas of the individual
 in the economy by Lindahl (1919), Hayek (1935) and Wagner (2020), this
 work takes the perspective of the combined reflexive lens, a theoretical
 framework which views the economy as a system shaped by the reflexive
 decisions and interactions of the individuals within it as they interact
 with the economic environment. This work asks the following two questions:
 a. What are the key mechanisms that drive how individuals decide to
 contribute to the economy? b. What is the impact of individual decisions
 in evolving the economy? 
 
 
 Critical realism underpins the methodology of this work, providing a lens
 through which we can understand the data as working within the
 multi-layered contexts of the real, the actual, and the empirical. The
 critical realist framework created by Vincent and Wapshott (2014)
 underpins the interview analysis of twenty-one students, university
 personnel, industry workers and members of local government from Korea,
 the UK, and the US. 
 
 
 Five key findings emerge from this research. The first finding from this
 study is the uncovering of perceived downwards economic constraints in
 Chapter Four and perceived cultural economic constraints in Chapter Five
 which shape and limit how individuals participate in the spontaneously
 self-evolving economy. This finding illustrates that individuals are
 perceived to face various barriers that constrain their economic
 participation before they begin working, while on the job, and throughout
 their careers. 
 
 
 The second finding is a new understanding of individual resistance
 behaviors, or upward counterforces employed by individuals to mediate the
 downwards constraints from Chapters Four and Five. Termed economic
 nonconformity, these behaviors show that not only do individuals react
 emotionally to the economy, they actively employ various strategies of
 resistance or rebellion, illustrating their creative and volitional powers
 to shape their economic realities. 
 
 
 The third finding is the suggested emergence of new features at the
 macroeconomic level perceived to be stemming from the actions of
 individuals. These are the Breakaway Economy, where individuals have
 foregone a traditional institutional job and created their own sources of
 income, and the Gateway Economy, where individuals have both a traditional
 job and a side hustle which they would like to turn into a full-time job
 in the Breakaway Economy. The primary drivers of these new emergent
 features are new technologies such as online platforms and social media. 
 
 
 The fourth finding is that these mechanisms are evidenced by perceptions
 crossing both national and generational boundaries. While differences
 among these groups remain, there is a convergence in perceptions and
 values which transcends the groups and becomes more obvious when we see
 the individual response to recent challenges such as COVID-19. 
 
 
 The fifth finding is the proposal of the model of the Spontaneously
 Self-Evolving Economy, a synthesis of the foundational theories of the
 combined reflexive lens with the analysis of the data from this work. It
 proposes a dynamic model of the economy based on a continuous interplay of
 individual reflexive decisions and interactions with the evolving economy
 to produce a system that is spontaneously evolving on the microeconomic
 and macroeconomic levels simultaneously and where individual decisions can
 create emergent effects in the larger structure that might not be
 anticipated. 
 
 
 These findings encourage us to ask the question of how we can define labor
 market participation and workers should these new perceived economic
 structures prove to be true with further analysis, as the terms employed,
 unemployed, and underemployed no longer seem to encompass the totality of
 workers in the economy. They also encourage us to ask whether and how
 traditional institutions and policies will change to entice workers to
 take traditional jobs, and how the potential Gateway and Breakaway
 Economies might affect the economy in the future. In addition, these
 findings call for the development of new economic indicators which would
 more accurately describe the results of individual contributions and their
 impact on economic reality, therefore bringing us closer to a convergence
 between economic theory and reality. Last, these findings illustrate that
 we should be focusing on individuals within the economy not merely as
 passive participants but as active creators of economic reality.