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Applied and bridge studies study record
Environment, climate & resourcesThe Constitutive Identity Impossibility Theorem: Why Markets Cannot Reform Industries Whose Identity Is the Welfare Cost
STATUS · Manuscript in progressSSRN · Not yet posted
MECHANISM
Identify the incentive structure and the condition that would falsify the claim.
RULE CHANGE
Read the intervention only after the paper shows how the current payoff space fails to support system welfare.
READER USE
Use the summary to see where private gain creates system exposure, then check the study record.
Contribution — what this adds to the conversation
Provides a formal framework that unifies 22 domain-specific impossibility results; advances the theoretical architecture of the SAPM program.
WHAT'S NEW · Introduces the Constitutive Identity Condition and proves a general impossibility theorem; no prior work formalizes this distinction.
The Constitutive Identity Impossibility Theorem proves that when an industry's welfare cost is built into its commercial identity—like coal's CO2 emissions or PFAS's persistence—no market mechanism can reform it. The only solution is substitution: replace the industry with an alternative that provides the same service without the constitutive harm.