Why My Theory of Business Cycles Is Different
1/8/2026
Most mainstream economic theories explain business cycles (recessions, crises, recoveries) as events caused by external factors acting on the system.
According to these approaches, crises are said to result from:
economic shocks (Real Business Cycle theory, RBC),
expectations or expectation errors by economic agents (Lucas),
market rigidities and frictions (New Keynesian theory),
or poor economic policy decisions.
These theories explain economic movements, but they do not explain why crises keep recurring, even after decades of reforms, sophisticated monetary policies, and increasingly complex models.
What My Theoretical Framework Proposes (the Breakthrough)
In my approach, business cycles are not external accidents.
They are endogenous, meaning they are produced by the normal functioning of the system itself.
Business cycles are:
distributional: they arise from how wealth and surplus are distributed,
institutional: they are shaped by the rules that organize the economy,
moral: they reflect a breakdown of reciprocity between contribution and sharing.
Concretely, a business cycle emerges when:
economic surplus concentrates in the hands of actors with low propensity to consume,
aggregate demand weakens,
debt expands to compensate for this demand shortfall,
leverage crosses critical thresholds,
crisis erupts not as a cause, but as a symptom.
The Essential Difference
The crisis is not the original problem.
It is the visible signal of a deep structural imbalance.
This is precisely why Ethosism is not a treatment of symptoms, but a response to the root cause of the cycle.
By reorganizing surplus distribution and restoring reciprocity between participation, responsibility, and sharing, Ethosism reduces reliance on debt, stabilizes aggregate demand, and prevents crises from mechanically reproducing themselves.
In other words, as long as we treat symptoms, crises return.
When we treat the cause, the cycle loses its destructive force.
Jo M. Sekimonyo
Chancellor, Université Lumumba
Political economist, theorist, human rights activist, and writer