Abstract
Indicative planning aims to coordinate private and public investment and output plans through forecasts or targets. Compliance is voluntary. The underlying logic is that the plan can supply economically valuable information which, as a public good, the market mechanism cannot disseminate efficiently. It may be perceived as a substitute for non-existing forward markets. However, indicative planning takes into account only endogenous market uncertainty, not exogenous uncertainty (technology, foreign trade and so on). Indicative planning has been most consistently and continuously implemented in France and Japan but has been used in many other countries, although decreasingly so since the 1970s.
Keywords
- Austrian economics
- Bounded rationality
- Forecasting
- Forward markets
- General equilibrium
- Imperfect information
- Indicative planning
- Planning
- Rational expectations
- Uncertainty
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Belassa, B. 1990. Indicative planning in developing countries, Policy research working paper no. 439. Washington, DC: World Bank.
Holmes, P. 1987. Indicative planning. In The new Palgrave dictionary of economics, ed. J. Eatwell, M. Milgate, and P. Newman, vol. 2. London: Macmillan.
Meade, J.E. 1971. The theory of indicative planning. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
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Nielsen, K. (2018). Indicative Planning. In: The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-95189-5_982
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-95189-5_982
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Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-95188-8
Online ISBN: 978-1-349-95189-5
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