Search results

The purpose of this paper is to clarify the presuppositions implied in a recent debate about the possibility of economic planning using computing models and to provide additional arguments relevant to the economic calculation debate.

Recalling the fundaments of the classical debate on economic calculation (L. von Mises in 1990, O. Lange in 1936, 1937) and using Cantor's theorem from the set theory the arguments proposed by Robert R. Murphy are reformulated and refined, sustaining the thesis that, in an economic system based on collective forms of property, the central planner must necessarily resort to an infinite uncountable list of prices.

The paper provides additional arguments supporting the thesis that computation in a planned economy implies computation with infinite uncountable domains. In addition, this paper rejects the objections raised by some earlier researchers in 2007 in response to Murphy's theses.

The possibility of computation and calculation in an economic system is of great practical importance. Institutional settlements and policies are not indifferent to the economic calculation problem. Different institutional settings can hinder the very possibility of economic calculation and rational allocation of resources. From this perspective, the conclusions of economic calculation debate are crucial. The economist's and philosopher's criteria used to define institutions and policies must take into account this important question of the possibility of computation and calculation in an economic system.

The paper is of value in providing additional argumentation concerning the economic calculation debate.

Since the late 1970s there have been a number of articles devoted to re‐evaluating the issues and arguments involved in the debate concerning comparative economic systems. The present state of this continuing debate is evaluated with regard to modern theories of planning, bureaucracy, motivation and property rights. It appears that the debate has not been settled yet.

Ludwig Lachmann’s Capital and Its Structure ([1956] 1978) is a classic in the literature in Austrian economics. It is mainly discussed in relation to the Austrian contributions to the macroeconomics debates of that time – from Hayek’s dispute with Keynes to the capital controversies of Cambridge UK and Cambridge US. Among Lachmann’s many ideas developed in that work, critical is his idea that the capital structure of an economy consists of heterogeneous capital goods that have multiple specific uses. This fact of the world makes the intertemporal coordination of economic plans a complex phenomenon and not a simple phenomenon. In the standard macroeconomic account, the coordination failure results from a distortion to the interest rate which miscommunicates to economic actors the underlying savings and consumption pattern in the economy at that time. This results in a boom/bust cycle, as the malinvestments in production projects are revealed in time and must go through a costly correction. But this discussion is simply an illustration of a much broader set of problems of relative prices as guides to productive activity in an economy and the problem of economic calculation. Our chapter explores the capital theoretic side of the socialist calculation debate and highlights the importance that an understanding of the capital-using economy consisting of production plans made up of heterogeneous goods with multiple specific uses is to the argument about the calculation problem being the lynchpin argument against the feasibility of socialist economic planning.

This paper applies the logic of economic calculation to the actions of autocrats. We model autocrats as stationary bandits who use profit-and-loss calculations to select institutions that maximize their extraction rents. We find in many cases autocrats achieve rent maximization through creating and protecting private property rights. This in turn yields high levels of production, with expropriation kept low enough to incentivize continued high production. Importantly, while this leads to increasing quantities of available goods and services over time, it does not lead to true development; that is, the coordination of consumer demand with producer supply through directing resources to their highest-valued uses. We apply our model to the authoritarian governments of Singapore and the United Arab Emirates, showing how they function as quasi-corporate governance organizations in the business of maximizing appropriable rents.

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.

When Beyond Positivism was published 35 years ago, it presented a compelling case for methodological change in the economics profession. That case remains equally compelling in the present day as, tragically, economics remains largely without the methodological pluralism at the heart of Beyond Positivism’s message. Among the costs of an environment of methodological myopia are widespread misinterpretations and the diversion of scholars from efforts at economic understanding to methodological wrangling, which we illustrate using the experience of Austrian economics in the 20th century. Beyond Positivism, we suggest, continues to provide the intellectual case for a pluralist discipline of economics, but one that requires complementary institutional reforms to come to fruition.

F. A. Hayek's contribution to economic science is broadly remembered as relating to the “use of knowledge in society” but his contribution to economics of knowledge are often summarized differently. We emphasize the contextual nature of the knowledge. Hayek says the market economy is capable of eliciting and utilizing in the process of coordinating economic activities. There is, however, a double meaning of context that we explore. Hayek developed his argument about the use of knowledge in the context of the socialist calculation debate, and the aspect of knowledge he came to focus on was the contextual nature of knowledge in human action in markets, politics, law, and society. This paper traces out the development of Hayek's focus on the epistemic foundations of the complex coordination in an advanced market economy and shows that his critique of classical and market socialism led to a refined, subtle approach to understanding spontaneous order. Furthermore, it is precisely Hayek's focus on the role of institutions in creating the conditions for the utilization and transference of knowledge through the price system that continues to shape the progressive research programs in economic science and public policy analysis that is his legacy.

The economic system is an expectation's feedback system, thus decisions made by economic agents are based on their expectations about the future state of the economy. These decisions affect actual realization of economic variables and this process leads to the new expectations. For a long period of time, economics was based on the erroneous belief that economic agents apply rational calculations to economic and financial decisions. The main purpose of the current paper is to present the theoretical model explaining emotion's component of expectations in the process of financial decision making.

The research is based on the generally accepted scientific qualitative and quantitative methods, including monographic method.

The paper shows how the expectations and subjective beliefs of different financial market participants could be translated into prices. After describing the main investor's categories, it is possible to model their subjective beliefs about the current price evolution on the stock exchange and formulate the demand strategy of each investor's group. Finally, the model shows mathematical considerations how prices result from demands, considering that they are set by the market maker.

The paper shows how emotions impact investors' beliefs and could be transmitted into prices. A particular agent category – the emotional investor – was formulated, who exclusively follows his intuition and whose presence influences market prices. So, there is no doubt that an appropriate rational strategy requires the adoption to the new kind of market agent and theoretical considerations presented in the paper could contribute to this process.