Economic Organization, Capabilities and Coordination

7

INFORMATION AND CO-ORDINATION IN AN EFFECTIVE COMPETITIVE PROCESS

Downie’s evolutionary model as a means of resolving Richardson’s problem with competition in the context of post-Marshallian economics

John Nightingale¹

INTRODUCTION

The task of the present chapter is to show that the problems of market coordination posed by Richardson are at least partially met by an evolutionary approach which recognises proprietary information, the passing of historical time and non-homogeneous expectations. This was demonstrated as early as Jack Downie’s work The Competitive Process, also emanating from Oxford in the 1950s. Downie shared with Richardson not only a scepticism of Cambridge microeconomics, but also many of the solutions to the problems inherent ...