On the antifragility-based economic sustainability – a crucial lesson from Covid-19 pandemic

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic is a non-economic, external, and unpredictable shock which directly affects the real economy, having the potential to degenerate into an economic and financial crisis. The paper aim is to find an institutional and structural way by which the economies could manage such shocks without covering unspecified risks or handling unknown uncertainties. In fact, the paper proposes a sui generis immune system of the economy which consists in endowing that economy with an anti-fragile potential to oppose against perturbations (either external or internal), no matter what kind, or their intensity, and even to gain from those perturbations. The proposal is analogous, from structural and functional point of view, with the biological immune mechanism, but it is designed on institutional bases (both discretionary and automatic). The anti-fragility property is more relevant and productive than other similar properties, such as: robustness, resilience, homeostasis and so on.

Keywords

• anti-fragility
• sustainability
• immunity
• perturbation