The worst labyrinth is not that intricate form that can entrap us forever, but a single and precise straight line. -Jorge Luis Borges
Thursday, January 1, 2026
By Yaroslav Lissovolik
Almost a century ago Spanish poet Federico Garcia Lorca observed: "I know there is no straight road, no straight road in this world, only a giant labyrinth of intersecting crossroads". Today the world seems even more of a labyrinth than before - too often deceptive and replete with traps and dead-ends. For his part John Maynard Keynes invoked the maze analogy to describe the excessive complexity of economic models, leading economists "to lose sight of the complexities and interdependencies of the real world in a maze of pretentious and unhelpful symbols". As for the world economy, viewed through the prism of a global maze it has arguably become more convoluted, fragmented, susceptible to frequent economic crises and encumbered with an expanding array of constraints facing the global community. And while there is a growing number of labyrinth-solving techniques and algorithms advanced by economists and AI gurus, there is more to solving the maze than mere optimization strategies, with closer international economic cooperation becoming to some degree as much of a missing instrument as also a goal in itself.
Likening the economic development paths with labyrinths may seem far-fetched, though some very broad similarities may be allowed for. The narrowness of the maze paths is akin to the constraints faced by economies in balancing the economy while aspiring for goals such as higher per capita income. The drive to reach ever higher GDP growth rates is increasingly constrained by sustainability/environmental factors as well as energy shortages and mounting debt levels. The dead-ends and traps encountered by countries pursuing fallacious strategies that result in economic crises could be compared to periods of backtracking in a maze when economies lose precious time and resume the search for an exit through alternative routes. The real-world quest for economic modernization presents cases when dead-ends or traps even when starkly encountered are not identified as such. Some economies or whole regions at times seem to circle in the very same circuits of maze tunnels for decades - as was the case in the second half of the 20th century with many economies from Latin America succumbing to debt traps and oscillating between "shock therapy" and populism.
In navigating the labyrinths of economic development, adaptability and flexibility prove critical. An economic strategy that relies on sectoral and geographical diversification in trade/alliances expands optionality and the possibility set for national economic policies. Also, an economy that is forward-looking, pluralistic/multi-structural and is driven by innovation and entrepreneurship will be more agile and capable of bypassing and surmounting obstacles. On a related note, there are significant limitations in the degree to which the front-runners in the maze can claim their strategies to be universally applicable to all participants as every country's positioning in the maze and hence the limitations faced will be very different compared to those of the front-runners. Furthermore, in a labyrinth-like setting, geographical and cultural distances/differences may play a role only to a degree, and what matters more are the conditions and limitations faced by each "maze runner" that may be very different from those of their fellow neighbors just across one of the high walls of the labyrinth.
The maze analogy may be contemplated as national economies starting at their very own entry points as determined by their respective idiosyncratic "starting conditions". The progression through the labyrinth may be driven by long-term strategies of how to optimize the solution search algorithm, while other approaches will be more short-term, driven by the immediate necessity to find an exit out of the pressing tunnel constraints. The solution to the maze riddle will never be final/definitive, in the sense that there will be no "end of history" and final/stationary points in the countries' development track. Rather the "maze quest" remains and will be a dynamic process that necessitates continuous choices and trade-offs.
In that sense, there will be no final goal, only intermediate objectives, of which one may be the entry into areas of "greater operational space" where there is more latitude and maneuver compared to the narrowness of the endless tunnels that occupy most of the maze. The temporary respite from being one of the first to reach the more spacious "center rose" of the maze will then be followed by the need to progress to the next maze level, for the "center rose" will be increasingly be congested by newcomers that have succeeded in their quest to walk out into the open.
For the economic objectives and constraints in real world policymaking to be translated into the topological mode of the maze, AI algorithms are already starting to be deployed in areas such as tax policy or fiscal spending. In the case of climate policy coordination, the scale of emission reductions may feature as the objective/center of the maze, while the walls and dead-ends may be associated with the scenarios of insufficient policy impulses to reduce emissions or the fiscal, growth and other macro constraints associated with CO2 emission reduction. The path chosen in the energy transition or economic adjustment by a given country will determine the sequencing of policy choices and the constraints/challenges faced.
In the process of reaching the end goal, the algorithm may be guided by optimization parameters such as finding the shortest path to the goal/center of the maze; time-to-solution; resource efficiency; minimizing constraints. With respect to economic policy coordination across countries at the international level, one of the promising algorithms is the multi-agent exploration - several agents explore different sections of the maze simultaneously, with information being processed to delineate the resulting contours of the maze. Such algorithms can reduce time-to-solution and provide a broader view of the "playing field". Other algorithmic approaches include the likes of Breadth-First Search (BFS), the Genetic Algorithms (GA) or Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) that provide for AI solutions for optimizing strategies in maze-like settings.
There may be a wide range of maze-like environments and settings that provide scope for the use of AI optimization algorithms via multi-agent exploration. While such efforts are yet in their infancy, some of the potential areas of such applications may include: regional integration trajectories, building transportation connectivity across regions, fiscal federalism (optimizing allocations from the federal center), coordinated fiscal stimulus, regulation in the electricity grid, targeted aid/support delivery, urban development (including optimization of traffic flows), sequencing of macroeconomic reforms and optimizing macroeconomic policies.
Multi-agent exploration algorithms may be particularly suited in a setting of international economic cooperation as it exploits the differences in experience and location of various agents/economies in arriving at a common goal. The use of such algorithms may be evaluated in the context of global/regional initiatives such as WTO trade rounds and discussions on tariff cuts; measures to combat land degradation; international debt restructuring; global emissions coordination within the framework of the Paris Agreement. An important pre-condition for such a coordinated maze quest to work is for all the participants to be driven by common goals and objectives. This will allow the exchange of experiences and trials across countries to improve the algorithms of every participant - such commonality in approaches may be facilitated by international organizations and platforms such as the G20 or the regional integration platforms.
In terms of practical implications for international organizations, modeling the potential scenarios through parallel/multi-agent algorithms that exploit the synergies in cross-country experience or simulations that illustrate the dividends of joint actions may serve to boost international cooperation. In this respect, AI simulations could be instrumental in estimating the potential positive spillover effects/externalities from joint actions in areas such as multilateral trade negotiations, climate change, joint economic stimuli. Such forward-looking analytics may be performed with the use of Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning (MARL) in which policies are formed via trial-and-error in simulated environments; another possibility is to also use hybrid algorithms such as the ACO-GA. The resulting simulation analytics could perhaps become part of the regular set of reports and forecasts unveiled by international organizations during their flagship events - like the WEO projections and forecasts of the IMF during the IMF/World Bank meetings.
To be sure, all pathways to development and modernization braved by the national economies serve a purpose as they inform the global community of the constraints, limitations and gateways in the labyrinth. Every country will leave its very own mark in the global maze, their own algorithm and delineate a unique "path dependence" trail. In the myth of the Daedalus labyrinth, Theseus has to find a way back and Ariadne's thread is to serve this purpose. In the real world of economic modernization there is no way back - for the past has already been transformed by the progression of time and changing conditions. But an understanding of the starting point and how the center of the maze was reached is critical for the further advances in the intricate networks and endless tunnels of economic development. For the quest never stops: "Then we got into a labyrinth, and, when we thought we were at the end, came out again at the beginning, having still to see as much as ever." ― Plato, dialogue Euthydemus.
Across the regions and associations of the world economy, the one analogy with the labyrinth concept that comes to mind is the BRICS group - for its members are positioned at times in extremely distant locations (different entry points in the maze), and as "economies in transition" or "emerging economies" they have to navigate a difficult and arduous journey with plenty of dead-ends and traps, before they manage to converge towards greater integration/economic cooperation in what may be pictured as the "center rose" of the global labyrinth. Indeed, the BRICS enterprise of bringing such different and distant cultures/economies together from across the globe is a unique challenge, one that requires innovation, perseverance and the vastness of historical/civilizational experience. But this may be precisely the challenge to overcome to bring the world economy closer to the paradigm of economic cooperation. After all, this is perhaps the type of the labyrinth we want in the global economy - rather than a cut-throat "zero-sum competitive race", a common cooperative effort that pushes forward the "possibilities frontier" and elevates the world economy to ever higher levels of development.
PS: the Greek legend on Ariadne's thread leaves one further message from the past. And that is that there may be more to "reaching the center" than optimization algorithms (in the case of Daedalus the simple algorithm was: "go forwards, always down, and never left or right), with the missing link being the "moral compass" to guide through one's "inner maze". Theseus may have performed a feat by slaying the Minotaur, but lacked that "inner GPS" to face a tragic end. This lack of an inner guidance/moral code may be the problem in today's global economy, in which it is not the lack of technological advances, but the inability of values and moral principles to keep up with the exigencies of progress. As Haruki Murakami wrote, "things outside you are projections of what's inside you, and what's inside you is a projection of what's outside. So when you step into the labyrinth outside you, at the same time you're stepping into the labyrinth inside". My wish for 2026 is for all of us to seek out that inner "center rose" of the "maze within" that should help us through the challenging times of post-modernity and post-truths.
Yaroslav Lissovolik worked in the International Monetary Fund, in Washington, where he was Advisor to the Executive Director for the Russian Federation (2001-2004). In 2004 he joined Deutsche Bank as Chief Economist and became Head of Company Research in Russia in 2009, and then a member of the Management Board of Deutsche Bank in Russia in 2011. In 2015-2018 Yaroslav Lissovolik was Chief Economist and subsequently Managing Director of Research and Member of the Management Board at the Eurasian Development Bank (EDB). From 2018 to 2022 he has been Senior Managing Director - Head of Research at Sberbank Investment Research (CIB). In 2023 he founded BRICS+ Analytics to conduct in-depth research on the future trajectories of BRICS+ development.
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