Economic Yang–Mills Mass Gap in Global and Corridor Flow Networks: A Finite-Network Gauge-Econometric Framework for Measuring Systemic Shock Thresholds

Abstract

This study develops a finite-network gauge-econometric framework for measuring systemic shock thresholds in global and corridor flow networks. The central problem addressed is that conventional macroeconomic indicators describe output, growth, income depth, inflation, or trade exposure, but do not by themselves identify how systemic stress circulates through corridor-sensitive network structures or when a local disturbance becomes systemically transmissible. To address this gap, the study constructs a two-layer empirical architecture. Layer A is a completed ten-node benchmark of global and corridor-sensitive regional nodes connected by twenty-seven weighted undirected edges. Public macroeconomic anchors are transformed into a normalized systemic-stress field and then into a corridor-weighted graph, a stress-weighted adjacency matrix, an anti-symmetric economic gauge potential, triangular curvature, Yang-Mills economic action, a stress Laplacian, an Economic Mass Gap Index, fragility, BridgeStress, resilience, and scenario-based shock diagnostics. Layer B specifies a 100-country by 15-year validation architecture, producing a planned N = 1,500 country-year panel for fixed-effects, two-way fixed-effects, Driscoll-Kraay, clustered, dynamic-panel, panel-IV, factor, and external-validation models once the country-year variables are populated and estimated. The corrected benchmark yields a positive finite-network economic mass gap of lambda_1 = 0.3850, with spectral radius 3.5023 and normalized transition threshold 0.1099. Positive spectral separation is retained under high-weight, medium-filtered, and sparse-filtered graph specifications, while Monte Carlo perturbations keep the mass gap positive across the reported uncertainty interval. The curvature-action layer reports total Yang-Mills economic action of 2,514.0 and a top-five action concentration of 78.329%, indicating that systemic stress-energy is concentrated in a limited set of network cycles. Scenario simulations show that inflation, financial-spread, trade/logistics, and energy/geopolitical corridor shocks weaken spectral protection, compress the local-to-systemic threshold, and increase curvature/action concentration. EMGI, fragility, and BridgeStress further distinguish large output-mass nodes from strategically exposed corridor nodes such as the Caucasus and Central Asia. The finite-network dataset and replication package are archived on Zenodo as Version v1, DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.20786199 (Gondauri, 2026). The study contributes a reproducible macro-corridor measurement pipeline that integrates systemic-risk theory, network topology, spectral graph diagnostics, gauge-theoretic analogy, and econometric claim discipline. The term mass gap is used strictly in the finite weighted-graph sense and does not claim a solution to the mathematical Yang-Mills existence and mass gap problem. Stronger causal and country-level econometric claims are reserved for the populated and estimated N = 1,500 panel.