Economics Social Institutions pp 105-129 | Cite as
“Economics and the Public Purpose”
Abstract
When Harold Demsetz reviewed Galbraith’s New Industrial State, he stressed the author’s remarkable talent “to rally popular support for ideas not now popular.” 1 Without questioning this view by entering into a detailed analysis of the characteristic features of the demand and supply conditions of the competitive market for ideas and beliefs, we suspect that Demsetz laid too much stress on Galbraith’s powers of persuasion and thereby strongly underrated Galbraith’s superior ability to know the market conditions for his products and to react to the demand functions of his consumers. We think it is not too far-fetched to classify both The New Industrial State and Galbraith’s two prior popular writings2 as major historical reference books that articulate, support, and manifest the otherwise unstructured cultural uneasiness of his typical reader.
Keywords
Planning System Social Institution Growth Rate Maximization Wage Increase Sales RevenuePreview
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Notes
- 1.Harold Demsetz, “The Technostructure, Forty-Six Years Later,” Yale Law Journal 77 (1968): 802.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
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