April EPERN Lecture: Abigail Devereaux on Synecological Systems
Our April seminar is scheduled for Tuesday, April 20, from 2:30 to 3:50 E.T. In this last lecture of 2020-2021, we'll hear from Abigail Devereaux on her project entitled "Synecological Systems Theory: The Theory of Action Arena Entanglement."
There is as yet no wholecloth formalization of institutional polycentricity as defined and developed by Vincent and Elinor Ostrom. The current approaches are based on flow maps, traditional game theory, agent-based modeling, and partial equilibrium analysis. I demonstrate in this paper that synecological systems theory, a theory of agent planning and action embedded in an institutional milieu developed by Abigail Devereaux and Richard Wagner, is a promising candidate framework for formalizing polycentric governance, particularly in its focus on synergistic channels of entanglement. Synergistic channels of entanglement are the emergent couplings of the outcomes of individual agents who never directly interact with each other. I define synecological systems theory as an ecology of action arenas and plans, demonstrate the emergence of synergistic channels of entanglement in a simple synecological game, and analogize this formalism for studying polycentric systems.
Dr. Abigail Devereaux is a Research Fellow at the Institute for the Study of Economic Growth and Assistant Professor of Economics in the W. Frank Barton Business School at Wichita State University. Abigail earned her Ph.D. in economics from George Mason University in May 2020, winning the Israel M. Kirzner award for best dissertation in Austrian economics for her dissertation, “Synecological Systems Theory: An Alternative Foundation for Economic Inquiry” written under the direction of Richard E. Wagner. While she was at GMU, she was a PhD fellow at the Mercatus Center (’16-’20), and a visiting PhD fellow at New York University’s Economics department and the Classical Liberal Institute (’18-’20).
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