Economic psychology and algorithms in the genesis of modern insolvency

Abstract

Ćontemporary insolvency can no longer be understood from the classic patrimonial categories. In the digital economy, indebtedness arises from the interplay between cognitive vulnerabilities and algorithmic architectures designed to amplify them. Phenomena such as doom spending, consumer gamification, and frictionless credit models (BNPL, digital microcredits) show that financial decision-making is shifting into an emotional and impulsive terrain, mediated by systems that shape expectations and erode decisional autonomy. Economic psychology shows that individuals do not act as rational agents, but under biases and heuristics that digital environments systematically exploit. This paper proposes the category of the heuristic debtor to describe subjects whose financial behavior is structured by cognitive biases amplified by algorithms, and argues that modern insolvency is an emotional and algorithmic phenomenon rather than a patrimonial one. From an interdisciplinary approach that integrates economic psychology, algorithmic design and bankruptcy law, it is argued that the traditional legal model-based on rational agency, individual responsibility and patrimonial guaranteeis insufficient to understand and regulate digital indebtedness. In this new ecosystem, insolvency emerges as a systemic product of the digital economy and requires reconstructing legal categories from a behavioral and technological perspective.

Keywords: Algorithmic consumption, Emotional Insolvency, Affective economy, Cognitive accommodation, Frictionless design, Heristic debtor

JEL Classification: D91, D90, G51, K35, D83