QU Xiangqin LIANG Tiancai CENG Ping WANG Gangfei
New Economy. 2026, 47(3): 26-40.
The fundamental structure of socio-economic actors is undergoing a historic transformation. The human-machine collaborative agent economy has evolved from theoretical concept to reality, revolutionizing the core logic of production factor allocation and organizational operations within the traditional economic system, and now stands on the brink of explosive growth. To this end, this paper defines the concept of the agent economy, deconstructs its industrial organizational structure, analyzes its core business model innovations and evolutionary logic, as well as its profound macroeconomic impacts and potential risks, thereby establishing an analytical framework grounded in industrial economics principles for this emerging economic paradigm. The agent economy refers to an economic paradigm in which, within a digital infrastructure-supported environment, numerous autonomous artificial agents—endowed with learning capabilities, evolutionary potential, and economic agency—serve as independent economic participants, through complex interactions, collaborations, and competition both among themselves and with humans, these agents allocate resources, create value, and facilitate exchanges. The defining feature of the agent economy lies in the reconfiguration of the allocation mechanism of decision-making rights and execution rights within economic activities, with three core criteria for judgment: economic agency, behavioral autonomy, and value network properties. As large language models, computing infrastructure, and platform ecosystems evolve in tandem, industrial organization is shifting from a firm-centered hierarchical structure toward a networked agent ecosystem supported by the infrastructure layer, platform layer, and application layer. In this process, Agent-as-a-Service (AaaS) and outcome-based payment are emerging as important mechanisms for value realization. The agent economy will not only reshape the pathways of productivity enhancement, firm boundaries, and value distribution, but also herald systematic reconstruction of social trust mechanisms, regulatory frameworks, and organizational forms.