Dear Colleagues,

Perhaps with the exception of the fiercest supporters of neoliberalism—who are unfortunately not absent from in any country and who sometimes cover important roles at political or administrative level—nobody today would argue any more that an economic system is sustainable to the extent that it generates enough profits for its owners or enough GNP for its citizens. In order to make an economic system sustainable, additional criteria should be added. Even when kept anchored to the “economic” aspect, the term “sustainable” can be articulated in a number of ways and generate a number of implications, for example:

- Different levels of aggregation and analysis: single organizations, industries, territorial systems, regions, international regions (EU, Middle East, Asian, etc.);

- Different economic regimes: varieties of capitalism and collectivism, transition economies, rural economies, developing economies, etc.;

- Different energetic systems: heavy vs. light oil-dependent countries, lack or abundance of non-oil energetic resources;

- Different social contexts: democratic vs. authoritarian regimes;

- Different conceptual perspectives: ecological economics, evolutionary economics, relational economics, complexity economics;

- Different views of transition from unsustainable capitalism to SES: soft-and-slow vs. hard-and-fast change, mild compatibility vs. sharp incompatibility with capitalism;

- Different methodological perspectives: standard statistics, network analysis, computational simulation models, AI methods, Big Data Analytics, hybrid approaches.

Each perspective raises a lot of problems to identify, conceptualize, and design an SES. Contributors can choose one or a combination of these perspectives to discuss such problems and perhaps to propose a possible solution. Both theoretical and applied studies are welcome.

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• economic system sustainable
• transition economies
• rural economies
• developing economies
• ecological economics
• evolutionary economics
• relational economics
• complexity economics