Fractal Analysis in Sustainable Finance: Understanding Market Complexity
A special issue of Fractal and Fractional (ISSN 2504-3110). This special issue belongs to the section "Complexity".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 28 February 2027 | Viewed by 410
Special Issue Editors
Interests: economics; sustainable development macroeconomics; fractal analysis; green financial markets
Interests: nonlinear market dynamics; modeling green financial instruments; environmental econometrics: multifractal and entropy-based methods
Interests: probability; mathematical statistics; statistical physics; applied probability; applied statistics; applied mathematics; information theory; multifractal analysis; data analysis; time series analysis
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Sustainable finance is undergoing rapid transformation driven by climate transition, energy restructuring, digital innovation, and geopolitical instability. Green bonds, ESG-linked assets, renewable energy markets, and climate-sensitive investments increasingly exhibit multiscale, nonlinear, and memory-dependent behavior that fundamentally challenges traditional equilibrium-based models. These markets display scaling laws, long-range dependence, volatility clustering, and regime-switching dynamics characteristic of complex systems, and these behaviors may differ meaningfully from their conventional counterparts in ways that standard financial theory cannot adequately capture.
Fractional calculus and fractal analysis provide rigorous mathematical frameworks for modeling such phenomena. Multifractal methods, fractional stochastic processes, entropy-based quantifiers, chaos theory, and information-theoretic measures enable the characterization of persistence structures, anomalous diffusion, cross-market dependence, and systemic shocks specific to sustainable financial systems. As green and climate-aligned markets mature and become increasingly intertwined with energy and environmental dynamics, these tools are becoming essential for capturing their distinctive complexity and improving predictability and risk assessment.
This Special Issue will advance theoretical developments and empirical applications of fractional and fractal methodologies within sustainable financial systems, with particular emphasis on understanding how complexity in green and climate-sensitive markets compares to, interacts with, and diverges from conventional financial behavior. We welcome original research articles and review papers addressing, but not limited to, the following topics:
- Fractional differential and fractional-order modeling in sustainable finance and energy–finance systems;
- Multifractal analysis of green, ESG, and conventional financial assets;
- Comparative complexity of sustainable versus traditional financial markets;
- Multiscale cross-dependence across energy, climate, and financial markets;
- Fractional stochastic processes and memory-driven dynamics in ESG and climate-aligned markets;
- Scaling behavior and anomalous diffusion in sustainable financial time series;
- Entropy and information-theoretic measures of efficiency and predictability in green markets;
- Nonlinear dynamics, chaos, and regime-switching in sustainability-driven market stress;
- Fractal and fractional modeling of green cryptocurrencies and ESG-linked assets;
- Machine learning and AI for detecting fractal structures in sustainable financial systems;
- AI and data-driven learning of fractal features and fractional dynamics in sustainable contexts;
- Fractional and multifractal methods for portfolio construction and risk management in green finance.
We particularly encourage contributions that enhance mathematical rigor while providing insights into systemic risk, resilience, and multiscale financial complexity in the context of sustainability transitions, as well as those that use fractional and fractal tools to shed new light on what makes sustainable finance structurally distinct.
Dr. Petar Mitić
Dr. Milena Kojic
Prof. Dr. Fernando Henrique Antunes De Araújo
Guest Editors
Manuscript Submission Information
Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.
Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Fractal and Fractional is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.
Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2700 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.
Keywords
- fractional calculus
- fractal analysis
- multifractal analysis
- fractional stochastic processes
- long-range dependence
- entropy-based financial modeling
- sustainable finance
- market complexity
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