Tue Nov 9 17:58:20 EST 1999
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I appreciated Paul David's latest missive, but am puzzled by one
major omission. Where is the comparative institutional analysis?
Suppose I were fully convinced that the market's ex ante choices
of keyboards, nuclear reactors, and agricultural technologies were
suboptimal (ex post) and that the resulting welfare losses were
economically significant. Is this "market failure"? Name the
feasible alternative. Where is the evidence that non-market
standard-setting -- e.g., standard-setting by a government body --
is less susceptible to QWERTY effects? Indeed, I would think that
if the political-economy literature of the last 25 years has
taught us anything, it is that politicized decision making is far
more likely to lead to suboptimal path dependence.
Peter Klein
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Peter G. Klein
Department of Economics, Univ. of Georgia, Athens GA 30602-6254
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