Israel Kirzner on Coordination and Discovery

Israel Kirzner has been one of the leaders in fashioning an Austrian school of economics. In his rendering of the Austrian school, one finds a marriage between Friedrich Hayek’s discourse with Ludwig von Mises’s deductive, praxeological image of science — a marriage that seems to us somewhat forced. The Misesian image of science stakes its claims to scientific status on purported axioms and categorical, 100-percent deductive truths, as well as the supposed avoidance of any looseness in evaluative judgments. In keeping with the praxeological style of discourse, Kirzner claims that his notion of coordination can be used as a clear-cut criterion of economic goodness. Kirzner wishes to claim that gainful entrepreneurial action in the market is always coordinative. We contend that Kirzner’s efforts to be categorical and to avoid looseness are unsuccessful. We argue that looseness inheres in the economic discussion of the most important things, and associate that viewpoint with Adam Smith. We suggest that Hayek is much closer to Smith than to Mises, and that Kirzner’s invocations of Hayek’s discussions of coordination are spurious. In denying looseness and trying to cope with the brittleness of categorical claims, Kirzner becomes abstruse. His discourse erupts with problems. Kirzner has erred in rejecting the understanding of coordination held by Hayek, Ronald Coase, and their contemporaries in the field at large. Kirzner’s refraining from the looser Smithian perspective stems from his devotion to Misesianism. Beyond all the criticism, however, we affirm the basic thrust of what Kirzner says about economic processes. Once we give up the claim that voluntary profitable activity is always or necessarily coordinative, and once we make peace with the aesthetic aspect of the idea of concatenate coordination, the basic claims of Kirzner can be salvaged: Voluntary profitable activity is usually coordinative, and government intervention is usually discoordinative. But the Misesian image of science must be dropped.coordination; concatenation; discovery; entrepreneurship;

PROTECTING CULTURAL MONUMENTS AGAINST TERRORISM: A COMMENT

Frey and Rohner (2007) propose that governments credibly commit to reconstruction of cultural monuments, as this would deter terrorist attacks on monuments. We contend that precommitment will serve primarily to redirect terrorist attacks toward non-replicable targets, possibly leading to loss of human life and physical capital at the expense of protecting monuments. The cost savings from lowering onsite security are minimal, thus funds would need to be redirected from other governmental activities to protect monuments.Terrorism, Culture, Monuments, Counter-terrorism, Deterrence,

305 Economists Called to Answer Questionnaire on the Pre-Market Approval of Drugs and Devices

We have created an online questionnaire that queries the respondent about whether the policy of pre-market of approval of drugs and devices has behind it any market-failure rationale. The questionnaire interactively interviews the respondent, making a virtual conversation. The point of the questionnaire is to explore whether anyone can provide a reasonable justification for the policy. This article presents the questionnaire and ethically summons 305 relevant economists to complete the questionnaire. We explain why any conscientious researcher is entitled to issue a summons of this kind, and why the summoned economists may have a responsibility to respond. The responses will be collated and reported (without commentary) in a subsequent issue of EJW. The ungated interactive questionnaire: http://www.surveywriter.net/in/survey/survey1427/pma.asp The pdf showing the whole architecture of the questionnaire: http://econjwatch.org/file_download/388/PMAQuestionnaire.pdfU.S. Food and Drug Administration,FDA,pre-market approval,drugs,medical devices,market failure

44 Transcripts: Economists Who Answered the Questionnaire on the Pre-Market Approval of Drugs and Devices

This compendium of transcripts constitutes the appendix to “44 Economists Answer Questionnaire on the Pre-Market Approval of Drugs and Devices“ — a report on the response to the interactive questionnaire on the pre-market approval of drugs and devices. Link to the report summarizing the responses in these transcripts

44 Economists Answer Questionnaire on the Pre-Market Approval of Drugs and Devices

In the January 2010 issue of this journal, we called, by name, 305 health economists to answer, without anonymity, an online interactive questionnaire about the pre-market approval of drugs and devices, and about the existence of a market-failure rationale for the policy. Of those called, 44 individuals participated. Here we summarize their answers to the closed-end questions and provide full transcripts of all the virtual conversations. We do not respond to or evaluate the responses. The 44 respondents come from 12 countries. Most of the respondents hold academic positions, but others are in government, industry, the non-profit health sector, and private research/consultancy. Link to this report's appendix which contains the 44 transcripts