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ERIK POSTNIEKS · COMPUTATIONAL ECONOMIST & RESEARCH ENGINEER
Reproducible experiments for consequential autonomous-agent decisions.
I build economic testbeds that make agent behavior inspectable: reproduce a consequential environment, instrument the decisions, test which interventions change conduct, and publish the code, results, nulls, and limits as an auditable package.
AVAILABLE FOR INSTITUTIONAL RESEARCH
Seeking full-time research, research-engineering, applied-science, or economic-research work in multi-agent systems, AI evaluations, agentic markets, computational economics, or auditable decision infrastructure. Open to the Bay Area, Boston, New York, and Washington, DC.
FLAGSHIP EXPERIMENT
Calvano pricing agents with decision-record instrumentation
A reproduced multi-agent environment, 32-cell treatment grid, saved results, robustness checks, compute audit, and public replication package.
HONEST RESULT
A record is inert until a reader can attach a consequence
Record filing stayed near baseline. Welfare-priced rewards and sufficiently frequent consequential audits changed learned conduct. Rejected alternatives added little deterrence in this laboratory.
OPEN INFRASTRUCTURE
Decision Record and Control Standard
A 17-field pre-decisional record for evidence, authority, uncertainty, predictions, rejected alternatives, affected stakeholders, system welfare, and reconsideration conditions.
RESEARCH PRODUCTION
20,630 computational sessions in the current audit trail
The package accounts for more than 236.8 billion instrumented decision-record rows and exposes the code, cell results, table builders, figures, and checksums used in the paper.
RESEARCH PROGRAM
Public portal for the Missing System Theory, the System Asset Pricing Model, and Decision Accounting
Standard bilateral economic analysis can show the gains and losses of the named parties to a transaction. It does not, by itself, carry the full system-welfare consequences of the transaction: the public-health baseline, ecological capacity, financial-system integrity, fiscal base, market trust, regulatory capacity, intergenerational burden, and other shared support systems affected by the decision. The Missing System Theory, a proposed working-paper result, formalizes that gap. A Hollow Win, denoted (0,1,1) for (C, A, B), is the resulting outcome: both private parties gain while the system they depend on degrades. This program names that outcome, measures what it costs, and shows how to change the rules to improve system welfare.
The word full matters. The Missing System Theory does not claim that firms are ignorant of system welfare, or that no part of system harm reaches private payoffs. A fossil-fuel firm can know the climate science, invest in safety, reduce emissions, respond to regulation, and price some risk through insurance, compliance, and capital markets, and Pigouvian taxes, Coasian bargaining, Ostrom-style governance, disclosure, and litigation can each price pieces of system welfare into the bargain. The claim is narrower and stronger: unless the full system-welfare coordinate is independently measured and made decision-relevant, the bilateral payoff vector will omit system harm. The System Asset Pricing Model measures independently estimated system harm against the revenue associated with that harm and reports the ratio as βW.
ABOUT THIS RESEARCH PROGRAM
This site presents the Postnieks program, which studies a pattern called the Hollow Win: arrangements that are profitable for the parties involved while quietly draining a shared system nobody is paid to protect — a market’s integrity, an ecosystem, public health, the public purse. The System Asset Pricing Model (SAPM) puts a number on the drain: the system beta (βW) is the welfare cost a sector imposes on the surrounding system for every dollar of revenue it earns, the way finance prices a stock’s risk against its return. The aggregate release remains pending while row evidence, denominators, overlap treatment, and independent simulation receipts are reconciled. The wider study also tracks coverage domains outside the ranked measurement frame. For each sector, the program proves one of two kinds of result: an impossibility theorem, where a law of nature guarantees the damage cannot be priced away while the activity continues — the constraint coming from physics, chemistry, biology, neurobiology, geology, or information diffusion, or an intractability theorem, where the trap is institutional — built by rules, and demonstrably dismantled by better rules somewhere in the world. The full framework, evidence, and all companion paper summaries are on this site.
Measurement notation
βW = ΔW / Π
βW is pronounced beta W. ΔW is pronounced delta W and means annual system-welfare loss. Π is pronounced capital pi and means annual industry revenue, never profit.
Erik Postnieks · Center for Decision Accounting
ACADEMIC READINESS
Start with proof status and falsification, then check the 61-domain table, beta W denominator rule, and Objections and Defenses. Domain Tables is the measurement view; Domain Theorems is the proof-status view. For the plain-language story, use the journalist/public path below.
Conflictoring comes from A. Shinnikov and O. Shinnikova's TRIZ-based conflict-resolution algorithm (TRIZ being the theory of inventive problem solving). Applied here, it names the conflict, finds the contradiction that keeps both private parties satisfied while the system fails, and picks the smallest rule change that dissolves that contradiction. Implementation routes through seven action lanes: employees or whistleblowers, CEOs and boards, plaintiff attorneys, shareholders, regulators, policymakers, and communities and the affected public. When enough of those lanes act at once, staying quiet stops paying and a Hollow Win becomes a win-win-win.
In System Asset Pricing Model and Missing System Theory use, the flow has eight checks: name Party A, Party B, and system C; classify whether both parties gain while the system loses; test the Missing System Theory axioms; measure beta W, annual system-welfare loss divided by annual industry revenue using the same domain, same time period, and same activity boundary; estimate crossover time; map the response ladder; select the minimum sufficient intervention; and verify escape.
FOR POLICYMAKERS AND REGULATORS
Start with the 17-field template if your question is how an operator records a decision. Start with Policy Lab if your question is what public actor can change the rules. The United States is the only research-progress first-pass map across all 61 studied domains; other jurisdictions are research-progress records with narrower coverage.
JURISDICTION CAVEAT: the aggregate release status is recorded globally, while current policy pathways are U.S.-first and require local verification before they become jurisdiction-specific reform programs. Use Policy Lab or Reform Pathfinder to check which route is actually mapped.
Evidence status records the aggregate release state. No public aggregate confidence interval has been published yet.
RESEARCH STATUS
The research index distinguishes public research records from manuscripts still undergoing citation and publication review. Public pages link only records ready for public use; source notes are retained at each stage.
NEW TO THE SITE?
Start with the glossary for the vocabulary, then use the journalist path for the plain-language story or Chapter 1 for the course sequence.
WORK TYPES SHOWN WHEN AVAILABLE: PAPER / SUMMARY / DECKPaperSummaryDeckAudio · planned format
15
foundational records above the domain program
76
public research records
179
source-stage records
61
studied domains
$72T
admitted annual system-welfare loss across the ranked portfolio
Evidence note: a public aggregate confidence interval has not been published yet because the overlap between domains is still under reconciliation.
STARTING ROUTES
New readers should not start by guessing the architecture. Pick the route that matches the question you are actually trying to answer.
Start by reader type
Choose the path for a dean, economist, regulator, executive, journalist, student, investor, or affected community.
Open Reader Routes
New to the thesis
Start here if this is your first visit: the curriculum gives the theorem, taxonomy, measurement logic, and reader path in order.
Start with Curriculum
For operators and executives
Use the Executive Brief when your question is what to do on Monday morning: pick a decision, fill the 17-field record, document the system-welfare analysis, and name the reviewer.
Open Executive Brief
Testing the numbers
Use the tables, methodology page, and academic hub to inspect measurement status, source boundaries, theorem types, and falsification conditions.
Open Data Routes
Looking for action
Go to Policy Lab or Reform Pathfinder if your question is which reforms travel across jurisdictions and which domains remain addressable.
See Policy Tools
Time-constrained reviewer
Read the paper summaries if you want a quick pass on claims, evidence, and review priority before committing to full papers.
Browse Summaries
READ MISSING SYSTEM THEOREM SOURCEFIELD-BASED DECISION LOGMONDAY-MORNING ACTIONSEE RESEARCH INDEXAUDIT THE THESISBROWSE SUMMARIES
ENTER BY WHO YOU ARE
For Economists & reviewers
Theorem, axioms, falsification, βW calibration
For Policymakers & regulators
Which failures are reformable, jurisdiction-tested models, jurisdiction translation
For Operators & executives
Monday-morning action, 17-field template, and decision-record workflow
For Lawyers, boards & compliance
Decision Accounting, liability, and the reconstructable record
For Journalists & the public
The story in plain language — who gains, who pays, the number behind it
For Affected communities
Find your jurisdiction route and comparable reforms
PUBLIC NOW
61 studied domains
The site publishes the studied-domain slate, admitted domain measurements, source records, and policy tooling. Domain Tables is the measurement view; Domain Theorems is the proof-status view.
STATUS NOTE
Missing System Theory
The theorem is presented as a proposed working-paper bounded theorem with explicit assumptions and status labels, not as a universal rule.
METHOD
Source-grounded calibration
Each admitted domain connects the claim, estimate, and cited evidence so readers can inspect the measurement chain.
EMPIRICAL UPDATE
Empirical update (current)
The most recent empirical rerun identifies heterogeneous support across prediction channels. We retain the status-tagged results and annotate unresolved predictions directly in the relevant paper records.
TRANSLATION
Jurisdiction reform routes
Policy Lab and Reform Pathfinder translate the studied domains into jurisdiction starting paths. Coverage is intentionally uneven: the United States is the only research-progress first-pass map across all 61 studied domains; other jurisdictions remain narrower research notes as local verification is completed.
HOW TO USE THIS SITE
Solve one problem, step by step.
The site is a cookbook for Hollow Wins. Pick one domain, read the welfare number, find the decision that keeps the damage going, require a reviewable record, and route that record to people with authority to change the game.
It is written for an Indonesian fishing cooperative as much as for an FX-fixing desk in New York: the local facts change, but the operating sequence stays the same.
- Start with a concrete problem, such as payday lending, fisheries, foreign-exchange fixing, opioids, per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or another domain in the table.
- Use βW, ΔW, and Π to see the scale. For firearms, βW = 21.98 because $509.9B of annual system-welfare loss is measured against $23.2B of same-boundary industry revenue.
- Find the failure pattern that keeps the damage going. In payday lending, the mechanism is the Poverty Ratchet: rollovers turn short-term credit into a debt spiral.
- Locate the approval, renewal, procurement, rulemaking, benchmark, or enforcement decision where the Hollow Win is preserved.
- Look for a country, agency, rule, or program that has already changed the game. The payday example uses the UK high-cost-credit cap as the benchmark.
- The responsible decision-maker creates the record: a lender for a rollover, a board for a governance decision, an agency for a rule, or a benchmark administrator for a fixing process.
- Route the record to the people who can inspect it: examiners, boards, auditors, state attorneys general, courts, plaintiff counsel, regulators, or policymakers.
- Use Reform Pathfinder to check which actor, statute, docket, or rule exists in the reader's country, and mark anything unverified as local verification pending.
Exhibit: Missing System Theory
The missing record is not a third payoff. It is the system account.
A bilateral ledger can prove that both parties gained. It cannot prove that the benchmark, market, commons, institution, or legal regime survived. Missing System Theory identifies the unrecorded system account.
A > 0
Party A payoff
B > 0
Party B payoff
W ?
System welfare
Reconciliation rule
Private gain + private gain does not equal system preservation.
Disclosure alone may leave the same equilibrium in place. The repair is a rule change R that transforms game G into G prime.
HOW TO READ THIS PROGRAM
WHAT IS PUBLIC, WHAT IS PROVISIONAL
What the claim is
MST identifies the structural flaw in a bilateral game: the system-welfare coordinate is outside the payoff vector unless the institution designs it in.
What full means
The Missing System Theory does not say firms are ignorant of system harm. Fossil-fuel companies can know climate science, improve safety, reduce flaring, buy insurance, face litigation, and respond to regulation. Unless the full W coordinate is independently measured and decision-relevant, party payoffs will omit system-welfare damage.
Game-Change boundary
Game-Change applies when the parties, incentives, missing system cost, and available rule change can be specified. A possible repair still has to be adopted, implemented, and tested in the jurisdiction.
What can be checked
Domain routes expose theorem type, welfare beta, policy status, summaries, and navigation into the underlying paper stack.
What is still contested
Peer-review status, aggregation choices, cross-domain welfare assumptions, and the unsupported return-side predictions remain live questions and should be read that way.
REVIEW LENSES
Academics
Formal claims, falsification criteria, canon placement, and external-review status.
Policymakers
Which domains are institutionally reformable, where jurisdiction-tested models exist, and how reforms translate across jurisdictions.
Operators and executives
Where private gain becomes systemic fragility, which domain groups screen as exposed, and what governance changes alter the payoff structure.
Search is available from the left rail. On smaller screens, open the menu first, then launch search with the on-screen control or Ctrl/Cmd + K.
REVIEWER READINESS GUIDE
Serious readers need claim status up front. These are the main objections the site expects from economists, policy faculty, editors, deans, investors, and senior public users.
IMF / WORLD BANK ECONOMIST
REVIEW QUESTION
Cross-jurisdiction comparability, welfare aggregation, and fiscal incidence need to be explicit before the estimates can inform policy notes.
SITE ANSWER
Start with Academic Hub methodology, then Policy Lab/Reform Pathfinder. Treat βW as a ranked diagnostic and read jurisdiction allocations as provisional unless the domain paper gives local data.
ADOPTION CONDITION
Use/share if each cited domain exposes source basis, denominator, uncertainty, and reform feasibility.
TOP ECONOMICS PROFESSOR / ACADEMIC EDITOR
REVIEW QUESTION
The theorem is working-paper theory; overclaiming canon status or treating calibration as identification would weaken credibility.
SITE ANSWER
The site labels the Missing System Theory as bounded by stated assumptions, separates foundational records from domain βW estimates, and keeps status, assumptions, and limitations visible.
ADOPTION CONDITION
Use/share if the first read makes status labels, assumptions, and failure modes impossible to miss.
BUSINESS-SCHOOL DEAN / EXECUTIVE-EDUCATION BUYER
REVIEW QUESTION
A massive theory corpus is not assignable unless it becomes a teachable sequence with cases, decks, and a clear classroom arc.
SITE ANSWER
Use the 8-hour curriculum, paper summaries, and HTML decks as the teaching materials; use the full papers only for advanced modules.
ADOPTION CONDITION
Assign if one session can move from the governance-failure taxonomy to a concrete case and an executive decision record.
HKS / SAIS POLICY FACULTY
REVIEW QUESTION
Policy readers need legitimacy, institutional path, and international variation alongside a global damage number.
SITE ANSWER
Policy Lab and the reform route separate physically constrained domains from institutionally reformable ones and put jurisdiction translation after the theorem.
ADOPTION CONDITION
Use/share if the reform path states what government actor can actually change and what evidence would defeat the proposal.
INVESTOR / CORPORATE-GOVERNANCE SCHOLAR / SENIOR POLICYMAKER
REVIEW QUESTION
The site must distinguish investment signal, governance diagnosis, and advocacy; Paper 7's mixed result is the credibility test.
SITE ANSWER
Paper 7 is now framed as support for the first two empirical predictions, with the failed return-side predictions preserved; diffusion, not retrospective certainty, is the live market test.
ADOPTION CONDITION
Use/share if limitations are stated next to the claim, not buried after the pitch.
76
PUBLIC RESEARCH INDEX
61 domain records + 15 foundational records
SOURCE-LINKED
PUBLIC RECORDS
not a publication count
61 + 15
RESEARCH ARCHITECTURE
domains + foundational route
$72T
ANNUAL SYSTEM-WELFARE LOSS
admitted ranked portfolio; see evidence note
194
JURISDICTION NOTES
TARGET · uneven starting paths
22
LANGUAGES
TARGET · translation coverage
BY THE NUMBERS
61
STUDIED DOMAIN RECORDS
15
FOUNDATIONAL RECORDS
above the domain program
61
DOMAIN ESTIMATES
admitted studied domains
100,000
SIMULATION DRAW COUNT
admitted seed and receipt
3
DISTRIBUTION TYPES
triangular, lognormal, uniform
61
REPLICATION REPOS
studied domains
11
DOMAIN GROUPS
7
ACTION LANES
Conflictoring Protocol
18
CURRICULUM CHAPTERS
chapters 1–7 reviewed; 8–18 in editorial review
LATER
BOOKS
announced only when available
61
U.S. DOMAIN MAP
mapped starting points; legal review next
17
PRIOR IMPOSSIBILITY THEOREMS
1785-2013 canon, extension under development
WORKING PAPER
MISSING SYSTEM THEOREM
proposed working-paper bounded theorem; external review open
THEOREM CLASSIFICATION
PUBLIC THEOREMS BY TYPE
Impossibility14
Intractability34
Control13
Foundational15
Impossibility: physical/chemical/biological/informational — no policy path escapes the binding floor. Intractability: policy/rule-change path exists. Control: domains with documented mechanisms that can constrain or reverse the failure mode. Foundational: 15-record theory and governance spine. The 61-domain classification contains 14 impossibility, 34 intractability, and 13 control records; the foundational route is counted separately.
CONSTRAINT CATEGORIES
61
LEGEND
Physical / Chemical (10)Biological / Ecological (7)Thermodynamic (5)Institutional / Economic (22)Jurisdictional / Legal (10)Financial / Informational (7)
CORE CLAIMS AND TOOLS
The Missing System Theory
BOUNDED THEOREM
A foundational theorem with explicit assumptions that addresses a question earlier impossibility results (Arrow 1951, Sen 1970, Myerson–Satterthwaite 1983) did not pose in this form. Under three stated axioms — overlapping interests, system independence, and system dependence — bilateral Pareto efficiency and full system-welfare preservation cannot be simultaneously satisfied. Full is the load-bearing word: regulation, liability, engineering, disclosure, reputation, taxes, bargaining, and self-governance can price pieces of the system cost into private payoffs, but they do not prove that the entire W coordinate is recoverable from those payoffs without an independent measurement channel. Breaking any one of the three axioms lifts the impossibility, which is why certain cooperative forms and well-designed regulation avoid the trap.
System Welfare Beta (βW)
DOCUMENTED METRIC
For every dollar of revenue, how many dollars of system welfare are destroyed? The welfare-beta βW = ΔW/Π is estimated through domain Monte Carlo work and ranked where annual system-welfare loss and annual industry revenue match the same activity boundary. The ranked revenue-ratio portfolio is released only after row admission and aggregate tie-out; the broader study also tracks outside-frame rows that require the same-boundary test.
61 Studied-Domain Theorems
SOURCE-CATALOGED EVIDENCE
The public studied-domain slate separates binding physical, chemical, biological, or orbital constraints from institutional, jurisdictional, financial, or political constraints where at least one jurisdiction has documented a policy response. Each domain paper states its own axioms, proof sketch, Monte Carlo calibration, and falsification criteria.
seven-agent Conflictoring Protocol
CONFLICTORING PROTOCOL
A governance architecture in which seven agents — employees or whistleblowers, CEOs and boards, plaintiff attorneys, shareholders, regulators, policymakers, and communities and the affected public — each impose separate costs on system-degrading activity. The protocol is a methodological architecture; empirical jurisdictional validation is still in progress. Each reviewer perspective holds an adversarial prior so the overall analysis is not optimized toward any pre-specified conclusion.
System-Welfare-Adjusted GDP
RESEARCH PROGRAM IN DEVELOPMENT
A preliminary adjustment of national GDP that subtracts an estimate of the welfare cost of system-degrading activity. At the program's current full-panel aggregation, the adjustment is on the order of tens of trillions of dollars at the global level. The methodology, limitations, and sensitivity to channel definitions are documented in the reference papers.
Top-15 Foundational Route
PROGRAM ARCHITECTURE
The public architecture now starts with the top-15 foundational route: Decision Accounting papers, Missing System Theory foundations, System Asset Pricing Model measurement, governance mechanism records, disclosure theory, institutional theory, political economy theory, and Hollow Win theory. These sit above the 61 studied-domain βW rankings and do not display βW tiles.
LEARNING PATHS
A layered research library with a reviewed core curriculum, concise summaries, policy paths, and inspectable research packages.
📄AVAILABLE
Ranked Research Corpus
Academics & Researchers · Reference archive
A ranked corpus of System Asset Pricing Model papers, scholar extensions, and bridge papers with formal claims, Monte Carlo simulations where applicable, bibliographies, cited evidence, and status-order triage.
📊AVAILABLE
Interactive Dashboards
Visual Learners & Analysts · Self-paced
Interactive dashboards with welfare beta rankings, domain breakdowns, simulation histograms, and policy tools. Drill into the 61 studied domains.
📖AVAILABLE
Paper Summaries
College-Level Readers · 15-30 min each
Section-by-section summaries for papers. Each entry should identify the core contribution, source base, policy instrument, DA mechanism, and review priority.
🎧NOT YET PUBLIC
NotebookLM Podcasts
Audio & Casual Learners · 20-40 min each
Podcast discussions of each paper. Listen on your commute. Covers the core argument, key data, and implications.
🎬NOT YET PUBLIC
Narrated Slideshows
Visual Learners · 45-60 min each
45-60 minute narrated walkthroughs with select figures and evidence notes.
🎓AVAILABLE
Expanded Core Curriculum
Everyone · 18 chapters · review underway
An 18-chapter route through theorem foundations, SAPM measurement, Decision Accounting, public policy, jurisdictional variation, cited evidence, and research status. Chapters 1–7 are author-reviewed; chapters 8–18 remain in editorial review.
WELFARE IMPACT
$72T (admitted annual system-welfare loss)
ANNUAL WELFARE DESTRUCTION
Admitted result across the ranked revenue-ratio portfolio, with source and uncertainty receipts.
EVIDENCE NOTE$3.2T
REFORMED GDP GAIN
Cleanup savings plus productivity recovery; documented lower-bound estimate.
DOCUMENTED
HEALTH-HARM DOMAIN PAPERS
Mortality and morbidity claims stay in the contributing tobacco, opioids, UPF, pollution, AMR, and alcohol records with their own source basis.
GOVERNANCE CASE NOTE
Boeing 737 MAX is a management/governance/delegated-certification failure illustration, not a Decision Accounting failure or one of the 61 studied βW domains.
EXPLORE
Curriculum
Expanded core and full-canon path
Research Index
Research records and supporting links
Deep Dive
Interactive βW dashboard
Domain Tables
61 studied domains
Academic Hub
Formal propositions & falsification
Impossibility Canon
Prior canon plus SAPM result-status cards
Policy Lab
U.S.-first policy pathways; other countries research-progress
Reform Pathfinder
country starting points; coverage varies
Executive Brief
Executive-facing implementation pathway
Sovereign Brief
National policy analysis
Paper Summaries
Ranked paper summaries
A documented research program in welfare economics, system design, and policy translation.
© 2026 Center for Decision Accounting · Erik Postnieks · decisionaccounting.org