Index numbers are, of course, desired for purposes other than to measure the cost of living. One obvious possibility is to consider some subset of co… - Kenneth Arrow

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Index numbers are, of course, desired for purposes other than to measure the cost of living. One obvious possibility is to consider some subset of cost-of- living items, such as food. The logic of the preceding argument goes through precisely provided we assume that the distribution of food expenditures in any period among different foods depends only on the total volume of food expenditures and is independent of the prices of other goods, for any given total volume of food expenditures. This does not deny substitution between foods and other commodities, but we assume that the total effect of this substitution is already reflected in the choice of a volume of food expenditures. In a broad way, similar considerations apply to the pricing of producers’ goods, which should be interpreted as reflecting indirectly consumers’ preferences. However, there is undoubtedly a good deal more in the detailed working out of the theory that has never been developed.

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About Kenneth Arrow

Kenneth Joseph Arrow (August 23, 1921 – February 21, 2017) was an American economist, who was Professor Emeritus of Economics in Stanford, and joint winner of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics with John Hicks in 1972.

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Birth Name: Kenneth Joseph Arrow
Alternative Names: Kenneth J. Arrow Ken Arrow
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Trust is an important lubricant of a social system. It is extremely efficient; it saves a lot of trouble to have a fair degree of reliance on other people's word. Unfortunately this is not a commodity which can be bought very easily. If you have to buy it, you already have some doubts about what you have bought.

Decision theory, as it has grown up in recent years, is a formalization of the problems involved in making optimal choices. In a certain sense — a very abstract sense, to be sure — it incorporates among others operations research, theoretical economics, and wide areas of statistics, among others.

There’s a famous Churchill quote: “democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others.” That applies to regulation as well. In the late 1800s, we had a natural monopoly: railroads. The government created a regulatory enterprise – the Interstate Commerce Commission – and of course it was captured. But it still made a difference.
I think we just have to accept that capture does occur, but it’s limited. The Federal Trade Commission, for example, is a pretty active body. Monopolies have been broken up. The AT&T telephone monopoly was broken up in 1982 – Stigler was still writing about regulatory capture then. AT&T was a classic monopoly, but a pretty benevolent one. It delivered good service – rates were too high, but not by that much. It didn’t necessarily pass on value to the consumers, but Bell Labs were a source of great innovative function. Nevertheless, it was broken up by antitrust measures, brought on by government.
So there is regulatory capture, but it is by no means complete. Regulations do play a role.
One example of non-regulatory capture fighting against effective regulation was during the run-up to the 2008 crash, when several officials argued for CDOs to be regulated, which means they would have had to meet certain requirements of transparency. This was not accepted. I’m not saying the crash could have been avoided if that happened, but that would have made a big difference.

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