{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,6,17]],"date-time":"2026-06-17T11:59:05Z","timestamp":1781697545383,"version":"3.54.5"},"update-to":[{"DOI":"10.12688\/f1000research.166262.1","type":"new_version","label":"New version","source":"publisher","updated":{"date-parts":[[2026,6,15]],"date-time":"2026-06-15T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1781481600000}},{"DOI":"10.12688\/f1000research.166262.2","type":"new_version","label":"New version","source":"publisher","updated":{"date-parts":[[2026,6,15]],"date-time":"2026-06-15T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1781481600000}}],"reference-count":33,"publisher":"F1000 Research Ltd","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2026,6,15]],"date-time":"2026-06-15T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1781481600000},"content-version":"tdm","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"content-domain":{"domain":["f1000research.com"],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["F1000Res"],"abstract":"<ns4:p>Background Corporate markups have risen markedly since the 1980s, widening the gap between profits and wages and fuelling income inequality. Counterbalance Economics (CBE) proposes a market-mediated voucher mechanism that recycles part of markup rents into firm-redeemable purchasing power for low-income households. Methodology We assemble an unbalanced panel of 12 countries (1982-2016) combining World Bank\/LIS Gini indices, aggregate markups, macro controls, and within-sample policy analogues. Because four later policy cases occur after 2016, empirical identification rests only on China, Malaysia and Australia; Germany, France, Sweden and Brazil are discussed as post-sample policy analogues rather than sources of estimation variation. Results Markups are positively associated with inequality, while the markup-policy interaction is negative in the preferred specification. These estimates should be interpreted as exploratory evidence on rent-capture and in-kind redistribution analogues. Conclusions CBE remains a potentially scalable complement to progressive taxation and universal public services, but its viability depends on institutional capacity, treatment coverage, inflation management, regulatory enforcement, and compatibility with existing tax-transfer systems. Future research should use microdata, sector-level markups, pilot implementation and fully reproducible code to test the mechanism directly.<\/ns4:p>","DOI":"10.12688\/f1000research.166262.3","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2026,6,15]],"date-time":"2026-06-15T01:24:06Z","timestamp":1781486646000},"page":"980","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.12688\/f1000research.crossmark-policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":0,"title":["Counterbalance Economics (CBE): Harnessing Aggregate Markups to Finance Voucher-Based Inequality Reduction"],"prefix":"10.12688","volume":"14","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0001-7947-9015","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Peter","family":"Malliaros","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Research Melbourne VIC 3051 UrCommunity Ltda"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-4208-5546","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"W Alejandro","family":"Pacheco-Jaramillo","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Economics Huixquilucan de Degollado State of Mexico 52786 Universidad Anahuac Mexico"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]}],"member":"2560","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2026,6,15]]},"reference":[{"key":"ref4","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"433-446","DOI":"10.2307\/1883167","article-title":"Wealth maximization and the cost of capital.","volume":"93","author":"A Auerbach","year":"1979","journal-title":"Q. 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Tripati Rao, Praveen Kumar, Indian Institute of Management Lucknow, Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, 17 Jun 2026, version 3, indexed","URL":"https:\/\/f1000research.com\/articles\/14-980\/v3#referee-response-493849","order":1,"name":"referee-response-493849","label":"Referee Report","group":{"name":"article-reports","label":"Article Reports"}},{"value":"The author(s) declared that no grants were involved in supporting this work","order":2,"name":"grant-information","label":"Grant Information"},{"value":"This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Licence, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.","order":0,"name":"copyright-info","label":"Copyright"}]}}