From Automation Surplus to Economic Circulation: Zonal Contribution and Settlement Systems—Fiscal Stress Testing, Capitalisation, and the Limits of Cross-Border Redistribution

Advanced automation can change the geography of economic value without moving public obligations in corresponding proportions. An exporting economy may retain productive surplus while an importing economy faces pressure on wages, tax receipts or demand. Such outcomes are possibilities, not necessary consequences of automation: existing research also finds productivity gains and limited short-run employment losses in firms adopting artificial intelligence. This paper consolidates four progressively demanding investigations of a proposed Zonal Contribution and Settlement System (ZCSS): a three-economy fiscal stress test (v0.4); a cross-border capital-market counterfactual (v0.5); a contract-receivables and debt-coverage exercise (v0.6); and a public-company participation screen with a prospective invoice-level price-incidence protocol (v0.7). In the synthetic 5% gross labour-income compression case, 2040 combined unmet public/household support is €3.569 billion with domestic instruments, €3.441 billion with unrestricted grants, and €3.468 billion with the restricted ZCSS allocation. In a separately sourced contractual-contribution experiment, direct annual distribution yields less 2040 unmet funding than bond or equity financing. Under a specified simultaneous import and margin contraction, a €1 billion ten-year bond has an approximately €0.856 billion modelled principal shortfall; a 1.30 debt-service-coverage screen reduces the illustrative issue size to €0.305 billion. Public company disclosures identify businesses suitable for exploratory approaches but do not establish contract participation, invoice-level receipts, automation-attributable surplus or consumer price incidence. The paper's additional institutional contribution is a Six-Gate Institutional Feasibility Test—authority, commercial participation, audit, incidence, collection and governance—specifying the evidence, independent review, prospective failure conditions and decisions required at each stage. The conclusion is conditional: a redistribution architecture is not economically additional merely because its ledger balances or it raises capital. The six gates are a proposed decision protocol, not evidence that ZCSS has passed them or that a commercial experiment has occurred.