Abstract
Welfare economics requires a criterion for economic “goodness” in regard to a society. Unlike conventional criteria, “coordination” (among independent decisionmakers) does not violate methodological individualism. The coordination criterion can be objectively deployed to judge events or policies, referring only to the given preference rankings of relevant individuals, given their initial positions. An important variant refers not to the attained (or unattained) state of achieved coordination, but to the ability of events or policies to affect the process through which a better-coordinated state may be approached. Several implications of the coordination criterion are explored.
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Kirzner, I.M. Coordination as a Criterion for Economic “Goodness”. Constitutional Political Economy 9, 289–301 (1998). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1009039219665
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1009039219665