Exchange and evolution

Abstract

This paper offers an extension of the distinction of [Kohn, Cato Journal, 24:303–339 (2004)] between the two paradigms of modern economic theory—value and exchange—as derived from the generic–operant framework of [Dopfer and Potts, The general theory of economic evolution, Routledge, London, (2007)]. I argue that Austrian and evolutionary economics can be analytically unified about a general framework of rule coordination and change that I shall call the generic value paradigm. This is an analytic generalization of Kohn’s “exchange paradigm” that will allow us to redefine his conception of the “value paradigm” as the operational value paradigm in terms of the economics of known and fully exploited opportunities. The generic value paradigm, in turn, underpins the economics of the growth of knowledge and the evolution of the economic order as an open-system process due to the origination, adoption, and retention of novel generic rules. Austrian economics is then circumscribed as a special case of the more general “generic” analysis of the coordination and evolution of economic rules. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2007Generic and operant analysis, Rules, Economic evolution, A1, B0, D0, E0, O1, P0,

Crypto-friendliness: understanding blockchain public policy

“…Another way to minimise policy error and policy entrepreneurship failure is to ensure that policymakers focus upon developing policy rules which not only minimise the prospect of erroneous and costly political discretion, but which allow non-political entrepreneurs to capitalise on their localised, more detailed knowledge to arrive at better solutions to economic-socio-political problems. Evolutionary economists have subsequently refined Hayek’s observations to suggest that policy entrepreneurialism directed towards constitutional rules are consistent with preserving the freedom of action by economic agents to adapt, and coordinate, their own knowledge and incentives to that of their environment (Potts, 2007; Dopfer and Potts, 2008).…”