Post Tagged 'market failure'

August 26, 2013

The Reason Markets Fix Mistakes

Pro-market advocates often talk about how markets are self-correcting. But why do businesses in free markets fix their own mistakes? Because if they don’t, customers and other stakeholders will punish them: Lululemon, which produces yoga and other athletic apparel, provoked outrage from its devoted customer base when it released a flawed product earlier this year: see-through yoga pants. Continue Reading...

April 14, 2009

Market and Government Failure

An essay of mine appears today over at the First Things website as part of their “On the Square: Observations & Contentions” feature. In “Between Market and State,” I explore the dialectic logic of market and government “failure,” which functions in part to provide us with a false dilemma: our solution to social problems must lie with either “market” or “state.” Continue Reading...

August 28, 2007

Usury and Market Failure

When the sign for one of those payday lending stores went up on the corner a block away from my house, I have to say I was less than enthusiastic. The standard response in a market economy to “market failure” is for a nonprofit to fill the gap in services or meet the need. Continue Reading...