Economic Relational Dynamics: Micro-evolution, Network Structure, and Macro-emergence

Traditional economic paradigms have long relied on methodological individualism, modeling market clearing through atomic actors in instantaneous, frictionless, and decontextualized transactions. However, real-world economic systems exhibit profound context dependency, temporal continuity, and complex interconnectedness. This paper proposes a comprehensive theoretical framework termed "Economic Relational Dynamics" (ERD), shifting the analytical core of economics from static individual agents to dynamic relationships.

We conceptualize economic relations through a four-dimensional space comprising transactional, trust, dependency, and network relations. Using endogenous evolutionary frameworks and differential equations expressed in plain text, we formalize the asymmetric dynamics of trust accumulation and collapse, the self-reinforcing mechanisms of asymmetric dependency driven by switching costs, and the endogenous structural evolution of complex economic networks. The analysis demonstrates that economic relations serve not merely as information channels, but as substantive micro-institutional foundations governing value creation and extraction. At the micro-level, relational interactions exhibit strong non-linear and positive feedback effects. When aggregated, these micro-dynamics give rise to macro-level emergent phenomena, including multi-stability, phase transitions, system path dependency, and structural fragility. This framework offers a unified analytical lens for non-contractible governance, industrial cluster evolution, financial contagion, and supply chain resilience, providing novel insights for topology-aware macroeconomic policy design.