Hayek1937
Aus Leowiki
Heftige Kritik an der vorherrschenden Gleichgewichtsanalyse, gefolgt von dem Versuch zu definieren, wie sich die empirisch begründet und gestützte These von einer Tendenz hin zu einem Gleichgewicht theoretisch erklären lassen kann.
- "The equilibrium relationships cannot be deduced merely from the objective facts, since the analysis of what people will do can only start from what is known to them. Nor can equilibrium analysis start merely from a given set of subjective data, since the subjective data of different people would be either compatible or incompatible, that is, they would already determine whether equilibrium did or did not exist." (S. 43)
- "The statement that, if people know everything, they are in equilibrium is true simply because that is how we define equilibrium." (S. 45)
Für Hayek folgt diese Tendenz daraus, dass die Akteure nur soviel wissen müssen, wie sie zur Erfüllung ihrer Pläne wissen müssen, ergänzt um jenes Wissen, das sie automatisch beim Versuch, diese Pläne umzusetzen, erwerben (z.B. weil sie an Grenzen stoßen, Erwartungen enttäuscht werden etc.). Zitate dazu:
- "We have a situation where a revision of the plans on the part of a t least some people is inevitable, or, to use a phrase which in the past has had a rather vague meaning, but which seems to fit this case perfectly, where endogenous disturbances are inevitable."(S. 40)
- "It is clear that if the concept is to have any empirical significance it cannot presuppose that everybody knows everything. I have already had to use the undefined term 'relevant knowledge'. (...) Clearly there is here a problem of the Division of Knowledge which is quite analogous to, and at least as important as, the problem of the division of labour. (...) The problem which we pretend to solve is how the spontaneous interaction of a number of people, each possessing only bits of knowledge, brings about a state of affairs in which prices correspond to costs, etc." (S. 48 f.)
Ergebnis dieser Analyse ist dann aber, dass es keinen Grund gibt zu vermuten, Märkte würden zu einem optimalen/maximierenden Gleichgewicht konvergieren.
- "While such a position represents in one sense a position of equilibrium, it is however clear that it is not an equilibrium in the special sense in which equilibrium is regarded as a sort of optimum position." (S. 51)
Sein Fazit liest sich fast schon wie ein Plädoyer für die "new economic sociology" (vgl. Kommentar zu Beckert 2007):
- "This is that if the tendency towards equilibrium, which we have reason to believe to exist on empircial grounds, is only towards an equilibrium relative to that knowldge which people will acquire in the course of their economic activity, and if any other change of knowldege must be regarded as a 'change in the data' in the usual sense of the term, which falls outside the sphere of equilibrium analysis, this would mean that equilibrium analysis can really tell us nothing about the significance of such changes in knowledge, and would go far to account for the fact that pure analysis seems to have so extraordinarily little to say about institutions, such as the press, the purpose of which is to communicate knowledge. And it might even explain why the preoccupation with pure analysis sould so frequently create a peculiar blindness to the role played in real life by such institutions as advertising." (S. 53)
