Theory gaps in Economics

Representative open questions

Showing 30 of 90 — one per source paper, highest-quality first.

• Black and green: How electoral outcomes influence provincial circular economy performance in Italy (2026) · doi

  The paper demonstrates that left-wing political orientations align with circularity policies while right-wing preferences oppose them, but does not examine mechanisms of policy implementation or enforcement intensity—specifically whether provincial administrations with left-wing majorities allocate greater budgetary resources or administrative capacity to circular economy initiatives compared to right-wing counterparts.

• Dynamical analysis of an OLG model with interacting epidemiological and environmental domains (2026) · doi

  The model currently assumes no direct effect of environmental quality on productivity. Future research must introduce and analyze how pollution levels directly influence total factor productivity, as this represents a missing channel of interdependence between the environmental and economic domains in the integrated framework.

• Multi-asset optimal trade execution with stochastic cross-effects: An Obizhaeva–Wang-type framework (2026) · doi

  The framework assumes bounded coefficients (μ, σ, and γ) across all proofs, but the behavior of the multi-asset optimal trade execution model under time-varying or unbounded market impact coefficients has not been rigorously analyzed. Extension to regimes where Obizhaeva–Wang-type parameters exhibit stochastic volatility or regime-switching dynamics requires new theoretical development.

• Ethics of AI-based supply chain optimization: a better balance between efficiency and fairness (2026) · doi

  The paper acknowledges the lack of cohesive policies on ethical AI use in supply chains but does not delineate which regulatory frameworks (fairness thresholds, transparency standards, audit protocols) should be prioritized or how they should be operationalized across different supply chain optimization domains such as routing, inventory allocation, and supplier selection.

• Predicting option prices from their price history via machine learning (2026) · doi

  The raw option strategy shows statistical significance only at the 5% confidence level (t-statistic of 2.25) with high volatility (annualized standard deviation 569.29%) and low Sharpe ratio (0.131 annualized). The sources of this extreme volatility and the conditions under which the LSTM IV forecasts fail to outperform random predictions remain uncharacterized.

• From Hype to Hesitation: A Longitudinal Analysis of User Sentiments towards AI‑Enabled Fintech Lending Platforms (2026) · doi

  While the paper mentions Expectation Confirmation Theory (ECT) as a theoretical framework, it does not empirically test ECT's core constructs (confirmation, satisfaction, expectation gap) through regression models or structural equation modeling applied to the sentiment data. Explicit hypothesis testing using ECT variables on fintech lending user sentiment would strengthen the theoretical contribution.

• Using artificial intelligence in marketing (2026) · doi

  AI analytics tools using Big Data capture correlations without explaining underlying causal mechanisms, providing "what" answers rather than "why" answers; research must develop methodologies that integrate AI pattern detection with theory-driven analysis to enable qualitative nuance capture that AI currently cannot achieve in market functioning analysis.

• Mathematical Modelling of the Ukrainian IT Industry Potential Assessment in the Context of Global Challenges (2026) · doi

  The integration of youth emigration intention (measured at 25-43% across regions) as a qualitative factor affecting IT sector potential lacks specification of how this variable should be operationalized in workforce planning models, what threshold emigration rates would necessitate model recalibration, or how the model accounts for return migration and diaspora engagement in the Ukrainian IT industry.

• Economic analysis based on the dual constraint assumption of resources and needs from the perspective of ecological civilization (2026) · doi

  The distinction between 'reasonable needs' and 'unreasonable needs' is philosophically defined but lacks operationalized metrics or measurement instruments. The paper does not establish quantitative criteria for distinguishing luxury consumption from reasonable consumption, nor does it provide a framework for empirically assessing when unmet needs restrict social production development.

• A Study on the Impact of UPI and Digital Payment system on the Spending Behaviour of college students (2026) · doi

  The study finds overall positive perception of UPI despite overspending concerns, but does not investigate the disconnect between positive attitudes and risky spending behaviors—specifically whether students acknowledge overspending risks yet continue impulsive digital transactions.

• Impact on Adoption of Artificial Intelligence(AI) in the Banking Industry. (2026) · doi

  The paper suggests AI applications for chatbots, personalization, loan approvals, and compliance automation but provides no comparative analysis of implementation complexity, time-to-deployment, or ROI outcomes across these different AI banking use cases to guide prioritization of AI adoption strategies.

• Women and medicine (2010) · doi

  The paper notes that women are 'under-represented in academic medicine' which leads to under-representation in medical leadership, but does not establish the quantitative threshold or specific pipeline analysis identifying at which career stage women disproportionately exit academic medicine pathways.

• Workforce Analytics for Manufacturing: Predicting Employee Job Satisfaction via Explainable Machine Learning and SHAP (2026) · doi

  The finding that demographic factors (Age, Experience, Type of Job) show minimal SHAP relevance (values near zero) contradicts established HR literature, yet the paper does not investigate why these traditionally important variables failed to influence the job satisfaction model or whether this reflects dataset composition bias, feature scaling issues, or genuine low predictive power in this manufacturing context.

• Recruiter's Perception of Artificial Intelligence Based Tools in Recruitment at Virtusa, Chennai (2026) · doi

  The finding that 61% of recruiters reject AI replacement narratives is reported as reflecting 'irreplaceable role of human judgment' but lacks empirical characterization of which specific recruitment decisions require human judgment and which can be effectively delegated to AI. Task-level decomposition of recruitment workflows identifying human-AI collaboration boundaries is needed.

• How artificial intelligence improves the resilience of marine firms: insights from China’s A-share market (2026) · doi

  The study identifies that AI's resilience-enhancing effect is substantially amplified only in marine firms with digitally-literate leaders, but the specific mechanisms through which leader technological knowledge moderates AI implementation remain unexamined. Future research should empirically isolate whether this moderation operates through strategic decision-making quality, risk assessment capability, or organizational change management competency in marine supply chain contexts.

• FINANCIAL LITERACY AMONG WOMEN EDUCATORS IN HIGHER EDUCATION: AN EMPIRICAL INVESTIGATION OF KNOWLEDGE, ATTITUDE, AND BEHAVIOUR (2026) · doi

  The study identifies that STEM field educators (Science and Engineering) show significantly lower financial literacy despite quantitative training, but provides no mechanistic explanation. Future research should investigate whether the lower literacy among STEM educators stems from curriculum focus differences, pedagogical approaches in quantitative disciplines, or selection bias in STEM career pathways among women educators in India.

• Factors Affecting Customer Satisfaction Towards Lоgistics Service Quality in Ba Ria - Vung Tau, Vietnam (2026) · doi

  Empathy was found to have no significant impact on customer satisfaction with logistics services in Ba Ria - Vung Tau, contrasting with findings from Baki et al. (2009). The study does not investigate why Empathy behaves differently in this Vietnamese logistics context compared to previous international research, leaving a critical contextual gap in service quality theory.

• The Influence of Gen Z Characteristics and Company Strategy on Turnover Intention (2026) · doi

  The model explains only 32.6% of turnover intention variation in Gen Z startup employees, with 67.4% attributed to unspecified external variables. Future research should empirically measure and integrate the identified mediating factors—job satisfaction, organizational commitment, work stress, and leadership style—into a comprehensive structural equation model to determine their direct and indirect pathways between Gen Z characteristics, company strategy, and turnover intention.

• Organizational Justice, Cultural Intelligence and Workforce Inclusion in Digitally Transformed Multinationals: A Systematic Integrated Review of Expatriate and Hybrid Workers in Emerging Economies (2026) · doi

  Digital inclusion has been studied as an isolated construct without examining intersectionality with gender, age, disability, and socioeconomic status; research must investigate how digital divides co-occur and compound with other diversity dimensions, particularly measuring cumulative exclusion effects in multinationals with expatriate and hybrid worker populations.

• Attitude Toward AI Use, Extent of AI Tool Utilization, and Administrative Efficiency among School Heads in SAMARICA District (2026) · doi

  The study concentrated on selected variables (attitudes, utilization, administrative efficiency) but did not examine other organizational factors such as institutional support mechanisms, resistance to change, or technological infrastructure quality that may influence the attitude-utilization-efficiency relationship in school leadership.

• WHAT ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE CAN DO TO MITIGATE ASYMMETRIC INFORMATION IN ISLAMIC BANK: A CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK REVEALED (2026) · doi

  The framework lacks guidance on ethical constraints and Islamic finance principles that should govern AI decision-making in borrower assessment and early warning alert generation, particularly how to ensure Maqasid Al-Sharia alignment when using automated systems that might falsely flag legitimate business transactions or borrower operational changes.

• HYBRID FORECASTING FOR THE CONSUMER PRICE INDEX USING SARIMAX, SARIMAX-MACHINE LEARNING AND SARIMAX-DEEP LEARNING MODELS: THE CASE OF CÔTE D’IVOIRE (2026) · doi

  The hybrid approach assumes that SARIMAX captures all linear and seasonal components while ML/DL models handle nonlinear patterns, but no decomposition analysis or empirical validation of this assumption is provided; investigation into potential residual autocorrelation or seasonal leakage into the nonlinear component is needed.

• Global Fast Fashion Industry: Present Opportunities and Future Challenges for Sustainability (2026) · doi

  The paper emphasizes localized production to reduce transport emissions and lead times but does not address the quantitative trade-offs between emissions saved through reduced transportation versus emissions increased through decentralized dyeing and finishing operations in regions with less efficient chemical and water management infrastructure.

• Entrepreneurial Skills and Quantitative Decision - Making: The Role of Business Mathematics in Emerging Enterprises of Assam (2026) · doi

  The mediation analysis demonstrates that business mathematics partially mediates the relationship between entrepreneurial skills and quantitative decision-making (indirect effect=0.21, p<0.05), but the mechanism by which business mathematics competencies translate entrepreneurial skills into improved decision-making remains unexplored and requires investigation of specific mediating pathways.

• TOURISM DEVELOPMENT AND SUSTAINABILITY: SOCIO-ECONOMIC AND ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACTS IN COX'S BAZAR, BANGLADESH (2026) · doi

  The paper calls for tourism governance research to balance development with sustainability but does not specify which governance mechanisms (regulatory frameworks, institutional structures, enforcement capacity) should be evaluated. Research must assess how specific governance arrangements in Bangladesh influence the effectiveness of community participation, environmental compliance, and cultural preservation outcomes.

• Impact of Talent Management on Emotional Intelligence in Food Industry Companies in Hodeidah Governorate (2026) · doi

  The study found no statistically significant impact of talent attraction on emotional intelligence in food industry companies in Hodeidah Governorate (β=0.077, p=0.416), contradicting the theoretical assumption; however, the paper does not investigate whether this null result is specific to the food industry context, geographic region, or organizational size, or whether different talent attraction mechanisms (e.g., employer branding, recruitment channels, selection criteria emphasizing emotional competencies) would yield different outcomes.

• Directional and disruptive selection in populations structured by class and continuous ontogeny under incomplete plasticity (2026) · doi

  Equation (37) reveals that disruptive selection on male growth depends on the fecundity-weighted average of size mismatch (2κ(x°m(a) – xf)² – 1) being positive, but the paper does not explore how fecundity distributions change under different ecological conditions (e.g., resource limitation, environmental stress) that would alter this condition. Sensitivity analyses varying fecundity functions and female size distributions systematically are missing.

• Towards Environmental Sustainability: Evaluating the Role of Energy Consumption and Urbanization on Carbon Emission in Nigeria (1990-2023) (2026) · doi

  The ECM correction coefficient indicates 116% yearly adjustment of short-term CO2 emission disparities, but the paper does not explain the mechanisms driving this over-correction or test whether inclusion of environmental policy variables (carbon taxes, emission standards, renewable energy mandates) would modify the adjustment speed.

• The legislative legacy of WTO accession: a retrospective analysis of Jordan’s industrial transformation (2000–2025) (2026) · doi

  While the paper identifies that the diplomatic impact of QIZs in manufacturing peace with neighboring countries was limited and economic cooperation failed to generate anticipated political spillovers, it provides no framework for measuring or testing what specific political outcomes (trade dispute resolution, bilateral cooperation agreements, conflict reduction) would constitute successful political spillovers in the Jordan context.

• Exploring Trade Offs and Conflicts between Energy, Biodiversity and Human Livelihoods for Sustainable Development (2026) · doi

  Stakeholder collaboration mechanisms and conflict resolution platforms are described generically without specifying: (1) how to weight competing stakeholder interests quantitatively, (2) decision criteria for resolving irreconcilable conflicts between energy expansion and biodiversity preservation, or (3) power dynamics when stakeholders have asymmetric influence over energy-livelihood-conservation outcomes.