Fundamental Uncertainty and the Firm in the Long Run

Description

Статья. Опубликована в Review of Political Economy, Volume 12, Number 4, 2000Oliver Williamson claims that bounded rationality and ‘behavioural uncertainty’ areprincipal factors in uencing market-based transaction costs. Post Keynesian economiststypically distinguish between ergodic and non-ergodic processes with the latter providinga technical de nition of ‘fundamental uncertainty’. Often, the salience of thisfundamental uncertainty has been ignored or con ated with bounded rationality andbehavioural uncertainty. Consequently, the richness and distinctness of such concepts ismuch diminished. This paper shows that while bounded rationality is a key behaviouralassumption that may account for the existence of high market-based transaction costs inan ergodic world, and thus for the emergence of rms as distinct modes of economicorganisation, it may do so only in the short run. I demonstrate, however, thatnon-ergodicity can be used to explain the existence of transaction costs and thus rmsin the long run.