Mill, Sidgwick, and the Evolution of the Concept of Market Failure

Steven Medema ()

No 3, CAE Working Papers from Aix-Marseille Université, CERGAM

Abstract: The views of the economic role of government in the history of economic thought have been, from the beginning, bound up in questions regarding the effects of the exercise of individual self-interest on society as a whole.1 The preclassical commentators looked for a means to coordinate or restrain the base effects of self-interested behavior and saw no means other than government regulation. Adam Smith and the nineteenth-century classicals saw the system of natural liberty harmonizing, to a greater or lesser extent, self-interest and social interest, allowing the market to function with a minimum of direct control by government. The development of neoclassical economics brought with it assertions of a rather extensive set of divergences that the market could not satisfactorily coordinate—market failures—and the argument that government could serve as an efficient coordinating force…

Pages: 18 pages
Date: 2004
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