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Purpose – To show that The Sensory Order is useful for understanding Hayek's position on the informational role of prices.

Methodology/approach – Hayek's psychological theory argues that every sensation is interpreted in the light of past experience. This idea is applied to Hayek's view on the price system by arguing that, similarly, every price is interpreted in the light of local knowledge. The usefulness of this approach is tested by addressing some common mainstream interpretations.

Findings – Prices perform their informational role in interaction with local knowledge. The standard view, in which prices convey the same information to everyone, ignores the fundamental importance of local knowledge and varying interpretations.

Research limitations/implications – The paper only discusses some of the central insights given in Hayek's theory of the mind. Furthermore, implications for connected issues, such as entrepreneurship and market process theories in general, are left for subsequent research.

Originality/value of paper – While the connections between Hayek's thought in different fields and the importance of interpretation has been suggested by others, this paper contributes to the Austrian price theory and suggests the relevance of The Sensory Order to economists by making this connection more pronounced.

Recently, sharing economy is gradually accepted by people, and it has expanded from life to knowledge. It is important to encourage people to produce high quality content in knowledge sharing area, and knowledge payment is one of the most effective ways to achieve it. Therefore, the knowledge payment has been regarded as a huge business opportunity, and it is of great meaning to study the development trend and feasibility of knowledge payment. This chapter, through big data methods, analyzes the business model of Zhihu (a Chinese platform of knowledge sharing) after it introduced knowledge payment projects, such as Zhihu Live and Pay Consultation. According to data of Zhihu users’ Q&A, concerned fields and others, this chapter tries to outline its user profile to find out the target groups of different topics, the proper form of knowledge payment and the hot topics of Zhihu Live. Through the analysis of knowledge graph, this chapter finds that Zhihu Live is expected to be the mainstream knowledge payment form in the future, and the most potential topics are mainly focused on science, law, and business. Meanwhile, it establishes a pricing model for Zhihu Live, and provides suggestions for the development of knowledge payment.

Hayek’s “Use of knowledge in society” is often misunderstood. Hayek’s point is not just that prices aggregate dispersed knowledge, but also that the knowledge embedded in prices would not exist absent the market process. Later, in The Constitution of Liberty, he argues that this same idea can also be applied to the study of political and collective choice phenomena. Democracy is not just about aggregating preferences. Absent the democratic process, the knowledge necessary to solve collective problems is not generated. We compare this perspective on democracy to Bryan Caplan’s and Helen Landemore’s theories, and we argue that Hayek’s account focused on “opinion falsification” is richer. Unlike Caplan or Landemore, who adopt a static perspective, Hayek is more interested in the long-term tendencies and feed-back mechanisms. For example, why do Western democracies seem to have gradually moved away from the most deleterious types of economic policies (such as price controls)? Hayek’s conjecture is that the democratic process itself is responsible for this. We connect Hayek’s conjecture about democracy to the broader argument made by Vincent Ostrom, who has claimed that public choice should study not just incentive structures, but also collective learning processes. We believe that this line of research, that is, comparative institutional analysis based on the collective learning capacities embedded in alternative institutional arrangements, merits a lot more attention than it has received so far. The question “Which collective choice arrangements have the best epistemic properties?” is one of the most important neglected questions in political economy.

The platform economy reflects the business model of some of the largest and fastest-growing firms in the economy. Platform business models emerge and thrive because of the potential profit in taking advantage of transactions cost reductions to connect people for mutual benefit, and this value creation is best understood by thinking about the epistemology of decentralized market processes. Three essential aspects of knowledge are relevant to platform business models: (1) knowledge can be private and diffuse; (2) knowledge can be contextual; and (3) knowledge may not exist outside of the economic process. After defining and analyzing the technology, economic, and institutional aspects of platforms the author defines and applies market epistemology to explore how platforms harness technological and organizational features to create value-enhancing market platforms by exploiting the epistemic benefits of technology-enabled decentralized market processes. The author concludes by using this epistemic framework to propose an electricity distribution platform business model – the retail electricity industry is undergoing a process of technological dynamism, and as a regulated infrastructure industry, evolving into a decentralized market industry is presenting challenges to which this epistemic framework can bring increased understanding.

Price has conventionally been viewed as an indicator of either monetary sacrifice or product quality. Previous studies on price are preoccupied with reactions and perceptions of consumers upon encountering price information. Research with explicit discussion of the meanings of price to consumers is rare. The purpose of the current research is to revisit the meaning of price to consumers in general, the deeper meanings that price has for people, and the conventional meanings that it carries.

Three focus groups and nine in-depth interviews were conducted. A total of 36 individuals participated in the study.

Our findings suggest that the notion of price is multifaceted. In addition to the conventional meanings, price can be related to how consumers perceive themselves and/or their lives in the socioeconomic order they inhabit.

Managerially, exploring the meanings of price could yield further productive results. As the implications of price regarding how consumers feel about themselves are revealed, pricing strategies that yield greater satisfaction for consumers can be discovered and implemented.

To the best of our knowledge, research with an explicit focus on the meaning of price for adult consumers is rare. By providing deeper insights into what price truly means to consumers, this study contributes to a more comprehensive understanding of the concept of price.

This paper includes an examination of two key issues on price decisions: (1) how should price decisions be made (the strategic and normative issue) within market contexts, and (2) how are price decisions actually made (the execution and implementation of price decisions). The paper closes with some observations useful for applied research and strategies for making effective pricing decisions. The propositions and literature review show that one pricing strategy does not fit a brand in all market contexts that brand executives experience annually in managing brands. Setting specific price points requires continuing deliberate management responses to dynamic market contexts. This paper provides useful sense-making conjunctive steps to accomplish such deliberate thinking effectively relevant for different market contexts.

This chapter delineates the antecedents of tourists’ perceptions of the extent to which they perceive the prices they pay as being fair. The study also tests the relative importance of overall price fairness perception, which is measured as the relative gap between the expected price and the perceived price. A model and hypothesis was developed and tested, with reference to existing theories. Data was collected from nine nature- and activity-based firms in Northern Norway. A regression analysis was performed, in order to test the relative effects and strengths of the antecedents of tourist perception of price fairness. The results revealed that both information and monetary antecedents affect perceptions of price fairness. In particular, monetary-related antecedents such as household income, payment in advance, and value for money affected perception of whether prices were fair. Interestingly, information-related antecedents such as previous experience affected negative perceptions of price fairness. The results are discussed in terms of their implications for the tourist industry.

During the socialist calculation debate, Ludwig von Mises and F. A. Hayek made a positive argument regarding the impossibility of economic calculation under socialism. In this study, I argue that the arguments made by Mises and Hayek have normative implications for capitalism. I do so by drawing an analogy between an Austrian account of the market process and a neo-Aristotelian account of human flourishing. Neither economic calculation follows passively from implementing a set of profit-maximizing rules nor does human flourishing follow passively from following a set of universal moral norms (be they of utilitarian, deontological, or natural law inspiration). Both economic calculation and human flourishing are inherently based on individual acts of knowledge creation, actualized only by self-directed individuals. In both cases, the creation of such knowledge is both contextual and specific to the unique circumstances of each individual of a particular time and place. Therefore, to assume that such knowledge exists ex ante, and is objective and transpersonal across time, place, and institutional context renders both economic calculation and human flourishing into a technological problem of given means and given ends, in essence defining both activities out of existence. The possibility of economic calculation and human flourishing are therefore dependent upon a political/legal order that protects the possibility of self-directed knowledge creation in both the economic and moral realms, that is, to say an institutional framework of private property rights.

This chapter traces the development of the pricing research program of Kent Monroe, beginning with his doctoral dissertation and continuing to the present time. Drawing on psychophysics and adaptation-level theory the early research efforts concentrated on validating two important concepts relative to behavioral pricing research: reference price and acceptable price range. Then the behavioral pricing research program expanded to explore how the context of a purchase situation, including the structure of the prices available for judgment, influences buyers' price perceptions and willingness to buy. In the early years his research included pricing models and research on patronage behavior. Subsequently, concentrating primarily on behavioral pricing research, he began to integrate findings from the research program into examining how various sellers pricing strategies and tactics influence buyers' judgments and purchase decisions. These efforts led to the first edition of his book Pricing – Making Profitable Decisions published in 1979. The book was subsequently revised and expanded in 1990 and again in 2003.