INFORMATION AND EFFICIENCY - ANOTHER VIEWPOINT
INFORMATION AND EFFICIENCY - ANOTHER VIEWPOINT
复制标题
DOI：
10.1086/466657
复制
发表时间：
1969-01-01
影响因子：
2.2
通讯作者：
DEMSETZ, H
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
DEMSETZ, H
将经济分析应用于有效经济组织问题的重要性几乎无需评论，但有必要审查效率概念在这些问题中的使用方式。由于许多分析师使用的特定方法，效率的概念经常被滥用。我的目的是检查与这种方法相关的错误和模糊性。我将重点关注如何有效地分配资源来生产信息的问题，因为在这种情况下，问题就很明显了。由于肯尼思·J·阿罗的论文《经济福利和发明资源分配》对确立这一主题的主导观点影响最大，我的评论必然是对阿罗分析的批评。现在普遍存在于公共政策经济学中的观点隐含地提出了理想规范与现有“不完美”制度安排之间的相关选择。这种涅槃方法与比较制度方法有很大不同，在比较制度方法中，相关选择是在替代的实际制度安排之间进行的。在实践中，那些采取涅槃观点的人试图发现理想与现实之间的差异，如果发现差异，他们就会推断现实是低效的。比较制度方法的使用者试图评估哪种替代的实际制度安排似乎最能解决经济问题；这种方法的实践者可以使用理想的规范来提供标准，根据该标准评估所有感兴趣的实际替代方案的差异，并选择最有可能最小化差异的有效替代方案。 2
THE importance of bringing economic analysis to bear on the problems of efficient economic organization hardly requires comment, but there is a need to review the manner in which the notion of efficiency is used in these problems. The concept of efficiency has been abused frequently because of the particular approach used by many analysts. My aim is to examine the mistakes and the vagueness associated with this approach. I shall focus attention on the problem of efficiently allocating resources to the production of information because in this case the issues stand out clearly. Since Kenneth J. Arrow's paper" Economic Welfare and the Allocation of Resources for Invention"'has been most influential in establishing the dominant viewpoint about this subject, my commentary necessarily is a critique of Arrow's analysis.The view that now pervades much public policy economics implicitly presents the relevant choice as between an ideal norm and an existing" imperfect" institutional arrangement. This nirvana approach differs considerably from a comparative institution approach in which the relevant choice is between alternative real institutional arrangements. In practice, those who adopt the nirvana viewpoint seek to discover discrepancies between the ideal and the real and if discrepancies are found, they deduce that the real is inefficient. Users of the comparative institution approach attempt to assess which alternative real institutional arrangement seems best able to cope with the economic problem; practitioners of this approach may use an ideal norm to provide standards from which divergences are assessed for all practical alternatives of interest and select as efficient that alternative which seems most likely to minimize the divergence. 2