Artikel

Marktproces, marktfaling en institutionele context

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Abstract

Market process, market failures and institutional context - The thesis is defended that, while the facts which are usually referred to as “market failures” need not be denied, the arguments which interpret these facts as “market failures” are on the whole quite untenable. It is suggested 1) that the tenacious hold of equilibrium-models in economics prevents adequate conceptualization of the real problems which arise in the course of the evolution of economic systems by implying a standard which the human mind is incapable of applying to the real world, and 2) that the facts which are usually cited as “market failures” (or, more often, as justifications for government intervention) characterize a situation which is not, and never was, a free market. Doubt is thereby cast on the empirical significance of the concept itself. The problem of historical causation must not be evaded by proceeding on the assumption that the market “evidently” failed to work in the past. In fact, even if there is evidence now that the market „failed” in the past, the question remains whether there was at that time information available which would have permitted the inferences a) that the market would fail to bring about some known “optimal” solution, and b) that the market would fail to take into account the relevant information despite the fact that it was available. Drawing on the analyses of modern “Austrian” economists, the author challenges the prevailing view of the market as a computer solving problems of optimal allocation on the basis of “given data”, and, following Hayek, argues that it be replaced by a view of the market as a coordinating process characterized by the search for, and distribution of, new information. It is argued that, on the latter view, the argument for the free market economy is essentially an argument based on the analysis of the effects of actions, private as well as governmental, which obstruct the process of coordination. It is decidedly not an argument based on the assumption that there is a “given” standard of optimal allocation which the market can be shown - either apodictically or probabilistically - to approach more closely than any other institutional arrangement. Finally, a number of allegedly necessary or inherent “market failures” are discussed. They are shown to depend either on the supposition that information is available which in fact is not available, or on arbitrary value-judgments, or on 237 institutional factors which are incompatible with the free market to begin with, or on the denial of the unity of the market process as a causal process in time.

How to Cite:

Van Dun, F., (1978) “Marktproces, marktfaling en institutionele context”, Tijdschrift voor Sociale Wetenschappen 23(3), 237–277. doi: https://doi.org/10.21825/tvsw.96088