The Case Against Markets

摘要

The degree of allocative inefficiency due to external effects is significant. Hope for reasonably accurate Pigovian correctives is probably a pipe dream. Market prices diverge ever more widely from true social opportunity costs as individual consumers, whose preferences are endogenous to some extent, rationally adjust their desires to accommodate significant institutional biases in the market system. Efficiency losses also mount as real markets become less competitive, with no sign of meaningful antitrust or regulatory correctives in sight.