The Theoretical Yardsticks

Abstract

Textbook discussions of economic systems are often a confusing mixture of so-called utopian (or perfect) models of enterprise forms on the one hand, and the description and explanation of actual industrial systems on the other. Wiles (1977, p. 5) finds that ‘extremists to the right and left who discuss, for instance, resource allocation, juxtapose the perfect (and non-existent) form of what they like with the imperfect (and maybe the only attainable) form of what they do not like’.