A Response to Professor Foss
نویسنده
چکیده
We are grateful to Nicolai Foss for his comment on our article.! Although we do not agree with his argument and consider it to be based on a fundamental misconception, his comment nevertheless raises an important point and gives us the opportunity to clarify our position on the role of institutions in the coordination of investment in a capitalist economy. Foss takes issue with our argument that the fundamental systemic problem of capitalism is the inability of atomistic decision making to take account of the interdependence of investment. Our argument may be summarized as follows. In a capitalist economy investment is undertaken on the basis of expected profitability. Since the profitability of an investment depends on the stream of future profits it is necessarily subject to uncertainty. This uncertainty is of two sorts: primary uncertainty that would exist in any form of economic organization; and secondary or market uncertainty that arises from the atomistic organizational form of a (capitalist) market economy. Since primary uncertainty is common to all economic systems.I we are concerned here with secondary uncertainty the uncertainty that is due to the fact that, when undertaking investment, capitalists do not know what interdependent investment (on which the profitability of their own investment depends) is being undertaken simultaneously by other capitalists. Given this ignorance, there is no reason to suppose that expected and realized profitability will be the same. Indeed, it is precisely the difference between the
منابع مشابه
بررسی اثر برخی عوامل محیطی بر جوانهزنی بذر خردل دروغین (Hirschfeldia incana (L.) Lagr.-Foss.)
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