Uncertainty, Costs, and Collectivist Economic Planning
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 9726484 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Jack Wiseman (corresponding author) |
| Year | 1953 |
| Volume | 20 |
| Issue | 78 |
| Pages | 118 |
| Publication date | 1953-05-01 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Economica (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0013-0427 • E-ISSN: 1468-0335 |
| Publisher | JSTOR (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.2307/2550837 |
| OpenAlex | W2317334525 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 4 |
The purpose of this paper is to consider the possibility, in conditions of uncertainty, of utilising a marginal cost' rule' to distribute resources between uses in an economy in which there is consumers' sovereignty, with freedom of choice of goods and occupations, but in which factors of production cannot be privately owned and exploited.2 It will be argued that in conditions of uncertainty (i.e. once the fact of time is admitted), the marginal cost rule, as normally framed, gives no clear guidance to those responsible for the organisation of production in such an economy. Attempts to reinterpret the rule in such a way as to take account of uncertainty preclude the possibility of a direct check on the efficiency of collectivist managers in obeying that rule. Any indirect, objective, check used as a supplement to the marginal rule will in fact supplant that rule as the directive for managerial effort, and in any case no completely objective check is possible. Further, whatever rule or check is adopted, imperfectly competitive behaviour is to be expected in the absence of detailed regulation to control it. In these circumstances, the most satisfactory distribution of resources seems likely to be obtained by an instruction to collectivist managers similar to the profit maximisation 'rule' of the market economy. Identification of the managerial and the public interest would then have to be sought through the detailed regulation of managerial behaviour, in much the way that the government in a market economy attempts to regulate imperfectly competitive behaviour by entrepreneurs. 3
Business · Collectivism · Economics · Individualism · Market economy · Microeconomics · Natural resource economics · Economic Theory and Institutions
| Citations per year | 0.08 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 1973 - 2020 (48) |
| Highly cited | No |