The Dynamics of the Institutional Change and the Market Economy: Understanding Contemporaneous Market Development Processes

The Austrian theory of institutions shows the particularity of being tied into a market process analysis. If such a specificity gave rise to a great number of analytical as well as methodological or epistemological contributions, its empirical dimension has been neglected to the benefit of the so-called Institutional works. The aim of my contribution is to come back to this untapped potential in order to exhibit the operational nature of Austrian analyses of institutions, particularly those of Lachmann. The objective here is to establish, through an appropriate temporal articulation of different institutions, the conditions for a harmonious development of market processes. I particularly show the great benefit of such a framework in order to, on one side, offer some explanations of the recent financial crisis faced by the emerging economies, and on the other side, to understand the specificity as well as the coherence of the Chinese economic transition.     

Permanency and Flexibility of Institutions: The Role of Decentralization in Chinese Economic Reforms

The purpose of this paper is to offer a Lachmannian analysis aimed at studying the coherence and the efficiency of reforms in China in terms of institutional change. The idea is that transition dynamics cannot be analyzed by reference to market criteria only; transition is, above all, a change in institutions. Every transition economy thus faces the problem of creating a new institutional framework which associates the co-ordination of activities by the market with the preservation of a centralized mechanism of resource allocation. We explain that, in China, this role is played by decentralization. Indeed, we demonstrate that Chinese economic reforms, of which the main institutional vector is decentralization, show the particularity of reconciling, within one single logic, the permanency of a well-established institutional order required for the co-ordination of individual plans, and the flexibility of institutions necessary for the move towards the market. We then defend the theory that both the success and the originality of Chinese economic reforms rest on their capacity to resolve the permanency-flexibility dilemma.     

Towards an Austrian Theory of the Firm

The Review of Austrian Economics -