From Equilibrium to Coordination: A Structural Reassessment of Microeconomic Theory

This programmatic paper reassesses whether the equilibrium paradigm constitutes a general theory of coordination in decentralized economies. By integrating four foundational results (Sonnenschein-Mantel-Debreu, Gorman, second best, and Myerson-Satterthwaite), it argues that neoclassical microeconomics neither imposes meaningful restrictions on aggregate behavior nor guarantees efficient coordination under heterogeneity and private information. These results reveal structural limitations that undermine equilibrium as a general organizing principle. The paper proposes instead a coordination-based perspective in which aggregate regularities emerge from dynamic interactions among heterogeneous agents at the mesoeconomic level within a complex and non-ergodic economic system. Coordination is therefore understood not as convergence toward equilibrium, but as the emergence and persistence of structured interaction regimes generated through networks, adaptation, and feedback processes. The framework is complemented by a computational illustration evaluating accumulation dynamics across different network topologies.