1 
 
 
 
                                                                                                                           
 
 
 
  
On the antifragility-based economic 
sustainability – a crucial lesson from 
 Covid-19 pandemic 
 
 
Emil Dinga* 
Gabriela-Mariana Ionescu**  
 
Abstract: The COVID-19 pandemic is a non-economic, external, and 
unpredictable shock which directly affects the real economy, having the 
potential to degenerate into an economic and financial crisis. The paper 
aim is to find an institutional and structural way by which the economies 
could manage such shocks without covering unspecified risks or handling 
unknown uncertainties. In fact, the paper proposes a sui generis immune 
system of the economy which consists in endowing that economy with an 
anti-fragile potential to oppose against perturbations (either external or 
internal), no matter what kind, or their intensity, and even to gain from 
those perturbations. The proposal is analogous, from structural and 
functional point of view, with the biological immune mechanism, but it is 
designed on institutional bases (both discretionary and automatic). The 
anti-fragility property is more relevant and productive than other similar 
properties, such as: robustness, resilience, homeostasis and so on.    
 
Keywords: anti-fragility, sustainability, immunity, perturbation, shock 
 
JEL Classification: H12, H83, K20
 
 
 
*PhD Senior Researcher, Economist; 
Institutional affiliation: Romanian 
Academy; Country: Romania; Email: 
emildinga2004@gmail.com; Address: 
Calea 13 Septembrie nr.13, Academiei 
House, Building B, 5th floor, sector; 5, 
postal code 050711, Bucharest, Romania 
 
 **PhD student; Economist; Institutional affiliation: Romanian 
Academy – School of Advanced Studies of the Romanian 
Academy (SCOSAAR); Country: Romania; Email: 
gabrielaionescu13@gmail.com ; Address: Calea 13 Septembrie 
nr.13, Academiei House, Building B, 5th floor, sector 5, postal 
code 050711, Bucharest, Romania  
 
DOI 10.32015/JIBM.2021.13.2.7 
 
© Copyrights are protected by = Avtorske pravice so 
zaščitene s Creative Commons Attribution-
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4.0) 
 
 Journal of Innovative Business and Management 
 ISSN 1855-6175 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
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1. INTRODUCTION 
The COVID-19 pandemic shock has taught us at least one crucial lesson: the economic system must be 
ready to face an unpredictable, non-economic, and external shock, wherever it came from. Such 
facing could have many ways: robustness (Doumpos et all, 2016), homeostasis (Damasio A. and 
Damasio H., 2016), or resilience (Buheji, 2018). Any of them has specific ends: a) robustness has the 
property of resisting to the perturbations (generally external), so the system structure (and, 
consequently, its functionality and behavior) can be preserved; b)  homeostasis (Rodolfo, 2000) has 
the property of „accepting” some changes caused by perturbations, but inside a margin which allows 
the system to keep its identity (that is, the perturbations’ effects do not go beyond certain established 
thresholds; c) resilience is a property which allows the system to suffer changes which lead the system 
beyond its limits, aimed at preserving its structural identity -  but has the potential to bring the 
system back into its initial state. It should be observed that all the three properties, (which could 
characterize, together or not, a given system), do not make else than counter-act, in different ways, 
the attacks from the perturbations. So, they have neither the potential to predict those perturbations, 
nor to gain from suffering their impact. Such a passive reaction of the mentioned properties should 
be questioned from the point of view regarding the best endowment of the economic systems with a 
property which completes the positioning of these systems. They can be active (or even, as we shall 
see, pro-active) properties, or reaction functions. 
The paper aims to identify such a property or reaction function of the generic economic system, and 
to provide some methodological and institutional proposals aimed at conferring its effectiveness. 
 
2. ON THE CONCEPT OF ECONOMIC SUSTAINABILITY 
2.1. What Is Sustainability? 
Sustainability is a concept which already entered the common language and, to some extent, it was 
even demonetized by use without too much discernment. However, it should be defined rigorously in 
order to be part of scientific analyses and assessments. In our opinion, the concept of sustainability 
has the following characteristics: 
 it is a property, either of a system or of a process. In conclusion, we cannot speak about 
sustainability when addressing a phenomenon or an event; 
 this property is of structural type, that is, it is deeply implemented in the system identity, so 
that all the functions exhibited by the system, or by the process assigned to it, are stable, 
repeatable, and in the most part, predictable; 
 from a logical point of view, a system/process is sustainable if its output has the potential to 
be entirely „captured” and functionally accepted by other system/process. In other words, the 
property of sustainability relies on the fact that the system/process concerned has the potential 
to replicate itself indefinitely, based on the fact that all inputs consumed are recovered through 
the corresponding outputs (either directly, or by a longer chain of successive or cascaded 
outputs – inputs concatenations in space and time). 
 
There is a definition of the sustainability, especially applied to the economic sustainability, assigned 
to the development process, which is provided by Brundtland Commission, namely development that 
meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their 
own needs (Brundtland Report, 2013). But it is easy to observe that the definition addresses the inter-
generational morality addressing the economic (and natural) resources which enter the economic 
process, and says nothing, in fact, about the content (if possible, from a scientific point of view) of 
the concept of sustainability. For example, if the economic resources consumed in the process are 
recovered (quantitatively, qualitatively, and structurally) by their own outputs, why should the 
question of sharing those resources inter-generationally (the criterion about inter-generationally 
shared consumption of economic and environmental resources belongs to the authors of the paper 
and is completely new in the literature in this field), in an equitable way, still remain on the table? 
 
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For the needs of the given paper, we shall propose a definition of the concept of sustainability, in the 
framework of the above identified characteristics and based on three sufficiency predicates (the 
definition will be elaborated for the case of a system): 
 (𝑆𝑃𝑆1): all the components of the system are related in an internal network. This means that, 
inside the system, any output of a sub-system becomes certainly an input into another sub-
system. The result is a dynamic self-covering of inputs for all sub-systems, so the system as a 
whole is replicable, in every cycle, at least at the previous level. In other words, this 
sufficiency predicate requires that in the system concerned, there are only closed internal 
functional chains;   
 (𝑆𝑃𝑆2): dominance of negative feed-backward. This means that any tendency for climbing the 
system functioning will be discouraged and the system will be re-stabilized;  
 (𝑆𝑃𝑆3): integrating the feed-forward into the feed-backward. The anticipations as well as the 
expectations (anticipations are logically (i.e. validly) inferred from models of rationality - 
that is, they are necessary, while the expectations are simply subjective desirabilities - for 
example, by Bayes’ assigning, probabilities to future events, (let us say based on the principle 
of insufficient reason) must be taken over into the feed-backward adjustment. So, not only 
the risks of perturbations are taken into account, but also the needs of the future society 
(generation) are integrated into the current decision. Just now, the unique requirement of 
the Brundtland definition of sustainability occurs (as a sufficiency predicate). This issue is 
remarkably interesting because it requires having, at the moment of adjusting the next input, 
based on the current output, a feed-backforward. So, for example, algebraically, the 
adjusting operator becomes more complicated. 
2.2. What About the Economic Systems Sustainability? 
It is useful to particularize the sufficiency predicates established above for the case of an economic 
system/process. We shall do this for the case of national economic system, thus, defining the concept 
of national economy sustainability (Balisacan and all, 2014). Such an application of the general 
concept of sustainability is required precisely by current COVID-19 pandemic, which has tested the 
capacity or potential of the national economy to function almost autonomously in the context in which 
the international economic transactions have diminished or were even stopped. 
(a) regarding 𝑆𝑃𝑆1: there are four economic chains which that must be closed for configuring of 
the internal network:  
 sectorally closed chain: primary – secondary – tertiary – quaternary – quinary chain; 
 technologically closed chain: research – designing – prototyping – production – an 
implementation chain; 
 commercially closed chain: mining/cultivating – storing/conservation – industrialization – 
transportation/distribution – selling/consumption chain; 
 financially closed chain: banking system – capital market – bonds market – inter-banking 
market – financing of last resort chain; 
(b) regarding 𝑆𝑃𝑆2: in economic free and decentralised systems there are inherent negative feed-
backwards which are based on the principle of the „invisible hand”. In other words, the economic 
systems, including the national systems, are, generally, self-testable regarding the most part of 
the economic variables; 
 
 
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(c) regarding 𝑆𝑃𝑆3: the economic behaviour is governed by two causal (and/or conditional) 
factors: 1) anticipations (or expectations, after the case); b) perceptions (that is, the idiosyncratic 
assessments of the economic variable dynamics and levels. Based on the two factors, into the 
behavioural decision procedures, they are, generally, included the „visions” on the future. 
Such concrete hypostases of the three sufficiency predicates in the case of the economic systems give 
them the potential to evolve in a sustainable way. Figure 1 illustrates such a conclusion. 
 
Figure 1: The three sufficiency predicates working to confer economic sustainability. 
Source: the authors. 
 
2.3. Could the Economic Sustainability Work Alone? 
The majority of analysts (and even of political decision-makers) regard sustainability exclusively from 
the economic perspective. In fact, the economic system is only one of the social systems (Arrow, 
1970)  which interact. Moreover, the economic processes or events can only happen through the 
individuals’ actions aimed at obtaining goods and services which satisfy their biological (and social) 
needs. In fact, the satisfaction of economic needs constitutes the only engine of any economic 
process. It results in an option that the economic system is the only means, the most efficient, 
however, to achieve purposes beyond the economic perspective, that is, social purposes. The 
conclusion comes without any doubt: the economic sustainability is neither possible, nor significant 
outside the social framework and of social validation (Harsanyi, 1980). We should thus be speaking 
about economic-social sustainability, not just about economic sustainability. In the next paragraphs, 
such necessary extension of the meaning of the concept of sustainability will be analytically 
developed. 
 
3. ON THE ANTI-FRAGILITY PROPERTY OF THE ECONOMIC SYSTEM 
3.1. The Concept of Anti-fragility 
The concept of anti-fragility was very recently introduced in a quite systematic way. Its meaning 
addresses, roughly speaking, the property of a system to gain advantages from the perturbations 
exerted on it, either from inside or from outside (the environment). Consequently, that system 
(Luhmann, 2012) must have such a structure (that is, such functions) which not only deal with the 
perturbations but, moreover, obtain advantages of different sorts. Starting from such a general 
disposition, let us find out the sufficiency predicates which could build the state of anti-fragility in 
some system (not necessarily of economic type). We believe there are four defining predicates: 
 (𝑆𝐹𝐴𝐹1) list of orthodox impulses: the system in question must keep its activity regarding the 
exhaustive list of predictable impulses generated by its own functioning and behaviour (both 
based on the system general structure). The predictable impulses address both the internal 
impulses (caused by their functionality) and the external ones (caused by their behaviour) - 
as it is well-known from the general theory of systems (Bertalanffy, 1969). The functionality 
is assigned to the relationships among the components/elements of system, while the 
behaviour is assigned to the relationships between the components of the system, on the one  
 
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 part, and its environment (either as outputs or as inputs), on the other part. Since both the 
functionality and behaviou depend on the system structure, the impulses generated by the 
functionality and by the principled behaviour are predictable (of course, it is presumed the 
structure of the environment is also known, so the mutual norms of reaction between the 
system and its environment are known as well); 
 (𝑆𝐹𝐴𝐹2) discrimination procedure: the system must have some kind of procedure to 
discriminate between orthodox and heterodox impulses occurring inside of the system or by 
crossing the system membrane. The system membrane separates between the system and its 
environment and can be of three types: a) physical; b) institutional; c) cognitive). All the 
impulses, no matter their origin and nature, which are not already on the list of orthodox 
impulses, will be considered as heterodox ones and listed separately on the list of heterodox 
impulses. The members of latter list are considered, in fact, perturbations (it is possible that, 
because of incompetence, for example, some of the perturbations identified as such are, in 
fact, predictable (Ariely, 2010), that is, be members of the list of orthodox impulses. This 
means that, along the time, the list of orthodox impulses has to be actualized as much as 
some of new perturbations are considered predictable); 
 (𝑆𝐹𝐴𝐹3) structural redundancy: since the structure of the system concerned is „programmed” 
to handle the orthodox impulses only, the heterodox impulses must be managed by redundant 
structural components. So, the anti-fragility requires some redundancy (which, of course, 
comes under costs) in order to treat the perturbations the system deals with; 
 (𝑆𝐹𝐴𝐹4)  fructification device from perturbations: in fact, this sufficiency predicate is more 
a specification of the 𝑆𝐹𝐴𝐹3 one, which means that the redundant structural components of 
the system concerned must have the potential to analyse the perturbations from the list of 
heterodox impulses, and find the most appropriate ways to capture advantages from their 
occurring (the concept of anti-fragility seems to suggest - and, perhaps, to „recommend” - 
although rather implicitly, an active behaviour of simply searching the… perturbations, by the 
anti-fragile systems. Logically, such a suggestion cannot be, however, implemented because 
of the definition of perturbations – they are unpredictable, so they cannot be searched at all).  
Two remarkably interesting consequences could be derived from the concept of anti-fragility: 1) it is 
not anymore needed to take into account the risks, because the anti-fragility has the ability to manage 
any risk; 2) the uncertainty is not anymore relevant for the anti-fragile economic systems.  
Analogously with the case of economic sustainability, Figure 2 illustrates the concept of economic 
anti-fragility. 
 
Figure 2: The four sufficiency predicates working to confer the economic anti-fragility. 
Source: the authors. 
 
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3.2. On the Relationship between Sustainability and Anti-fragility 
As the two concepts regarding a generic economic system – sustainability and anti-fragility, 
respectively – have been defined with respect to their sufficiency predicates, it seems the following 
relationships subsist between them: 
 both address the economic processes (or, more general, the economic systems); 
 both are properties of the economic processes/systems; 
 both have a similar finality regarding the process/system concerned – that is, its invariance 
or conservation from the point of view of the identity, either under the impact of own dynamics 
or under the pressure of perturbations (internal or external); 
 both are mechanisms of structural type, that is, with a large temporal permanency and 
continuity; 
 both seem to admit either discretionary or automatic devices for involved mechanisms, or, 
rather, a mix between the two kinds of devices. 
Based on these five structural and functional similarities, we think it could be alleged that the anti-
fragility property of economic process/system is a kind of the property of economic process/system 
sustainability. Consequently, any anti-fragile economic process/system is sustainable one as well (the 
reciprocal is not true – that is, sustainable economic processes/systems can exist, which are not anti-
fragile as well). Figure 3 synoptically indicates how the two sets of sufficiency predicates are 
correlated in order to lead to such a „theorem”. 
 
 
Figure 3: The logical relationships between anti-fragility and sustainability, based on the sufficiency 
predicates. 
Source: the authors. 
 
3.3. What is So Special about Anti-fragility? 
The property of anti-fragility is special under at least three features: a) as member of its own 
conceptual family; b) as fundamental role (function) exerted in the economic process; c) as viral 
mechanism in a sustainable process/system. 
(a) within its own conceptual family, the anti-fragility is distinguished from other concepts aimed 
at describing properties of systems to face the perturbations by: 1) robustness (Schupbach, 
2018) – means a passive resistance to perturbations, so the system identity may be preserved 
(conserved) due to „gross force”; 2) resilience – means a perturbed state as a result of 
perturbation, but with the potential of the system to recover the previous state; 3) inertia – 
 
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is a kind of robustness with the difference that the resistance is accompanied by accumulation 
of tensions within changing, so, beyond a threshold of such perturbing accumulation, the 
system loses its identity (i.e., its structure); 4) homeostasis (Vogel, 2020) – means the system 
oscillates under the pressure of perturbations, and the new states could differ from the initial 
one, but it remains in the „tunnel” of oscillations. As shown above, the anti-fragility does not 
only resist to perturbations by it tries to gain advantages from their exerting. As for the 
sustainability, we have already proved it is a genus for the anti-fragility;  
(b) anti-fragility is, in fact, special, exactly for its role (function) to capture from perturbations 
any advantages for the process/system concerned. Such potential is, indeed, remarkable, 
because the system involved uses just the „adversary” force to get to its own purpose 
(metaphorically speaking, such a procedure is applied in the Chinese martial art called kung-
fu); 
(c) anti-fragility is endowed with the hubbing effect – by hubbing effect we understand the 
property of a component of a system to exponentially extend its „map” of connections either 
inside that system or outside it (obviously, such an exponentiality is supported by positive 
feed-backwards - do not confuse the fact that anti-fragility acts by the dominance of the 
negative feed-backwards, with the fact that the hubbing effect which the anti-fragility 
exhibits is dominated by positive feed-backwards – the former addresses the role of anti-
fragility, the latter addresses the „life style” of the anti-fragility. In such a context, using a 
terminology imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic - the anti-fragility, once instituted inside a 
system or process, tends to „infect” the entire system or process in question, so it is viral. 
 
4. AN ECONOMIC IMMUNE SYSTEM BASED ON THE ANTI-FRAGILITY 
The COVID-19 pandemic shock (Fisk, 2020) is, of course, a perturbation in its nature because it is 
unpredictable. In addition, this shock is external for the economic system, because it is not assigned 
to a faultily working of an economic process or variable. Based on all above, such a shock can only be 
faced by endowing the economic system with the anti-fragile principle, that is, with such a structure 
capable to fight, including the capturing of advantages from that fight, with the mentioned 
perturbation. Our proposal is, therefore, to construct an immune system of economic type, based on 
introducing in the structure of that economic system the property of anti-fragility. We shall provide 
the following considerations in defence of such a proposal: 
(a) firstly, we could be inspired by the nature: we can observe that, regarding the biological life, 
the nature did not invent masks, gloves or anything else to protect us against viruses. It did 
so because of efficiency reasons: it should have invented specific protection equipment for 
every virus (and, in this context, it should have anticipated all the future possible viruses). In 
fact, the nature found out a universal solution which can deal with any virus, without the 
need to know or anticipate it – the immune system of the organism. The anti-fragility property 
of an economic system is exactly such an immune system of the economic „organism” (the 
authors have already introduced, several years ago, in other scientific interventions, the 
concept of logically living system (Kahneman, 2011), which is, in fact, the conceptual 
recipient of the anti-fragility property); 
(b) secondly, the introducing of the anti-fragility property into an economic structure ensures, 
as shown before, the sustainability of the economic system concerned, that is, it ensures the 
fundamental moving of the praxiologic model of the economic process from the optimality 
paradigm to the sustainability one; 
(c)  thirdly, from a theoretical point of view, to extract advantages from perturbations is 
equivalent, on the one hand, to extracting neg-entropy from the environment, that is, to 
augment the dissipativity capacity of the economic system in question and, on the other hand, 
to overwhelmingly improve the economic efficiency (Nietzsche aphorism according to which  
 
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(d) what does not kill you, makes you stronger is remarkably adequate here, although it is 
wrongly associated, in the literature, with the resilience. In fact, it expresses with a great 
accuracy the nude concept of the anti-fragility - the resilience would not make someone 
stronger, but only bring him/her at the initial position); 
(e) fourthly, the risk and uncertainty do not anymore enter the decision making procedure, 
neither at micro nor macro level in the economic systems – they will be considered simply as 
perturbations which are, to some extent, „well-come”, because they are bearers of 
advantages for the systems affected by them. This last consideration could lead to radical 
changes both in the prediction methodology and in formalizing the production functions of 
economic processes. 
Figure 4 suggests the logic way to endow a generic economic system with some anti-fragile property 
(potential), that is, with an immune device against the perturbations. 
 
 
Figure 4: The logical construction of the economic immune system based on anti-fragility. 
Source: the authors. 
 
5.  CONCLUSIONS 
The COVID-19 pandemic is a non-economic, external, and unpredictable shock which directly affects 
the real economy, having the potential to generate an economic and financial crisis. In this paper we 
aimed to find an institutional and structural way by which the economies could manage such shocks 
without covering unspecified risks or handling unknown uncertainties. 
The research proposes a sui generis immune system of the economy which consists in endowing that 
economy with an anti-fragile potential to oppose perturbations (either external or internal), no 
matter what their kind, or their intensity are, and even to gain from those perturbations. 
 
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