Armen A. Alchian

Uncertainty, Evolution, and Economic Theory

A modification of economic analysis to incorporate incomplete information and uncertain foresight as axioms is suggested here. This approach dispenses with “profit maximization”; and it does not rely on the predictable, individual behavior that is usually assumed, as a first approximation, in standard textbook treatments. Despite these changes, the analytical concepts usually associated with such behavior are retained because they are not dependent upon such motivation or foresight. The suggested approach embodies the principles of biological evolution and natural selection by interpreting the economic system as an adoptive mechanism which chooses among exploratory actions generated by the adaptive pursuit of “success” or “profit.” The resulting analysis is applicable to actions usually regarded as aberrations from standard economic behavior as well as to behavior covered by the customary analysis. This wider applicability and the removal of the unrealistic postulates of accurate anticipations and fixed states of knowledge have provided motivation for the study.

The Property Right Paradigm

Economics textbooks invariably describe the important economic choices that all societies must make by the following three questions: What goods are to be produced? How are these goods to be produced? Who is to get what is produced? This way of stating social choice problems is misleading. Economic organizations necessarily do resolve these issues in one fashion or another, but even the most centralized societies do not and cannot specify the answer to these questions in advance and in detail. It is more useful and nearer to the truth to view a social system as relying on techniques, rules, or customs to resolve conflicts that arise in the use of scarce resources rather than imagining that societies specify the particular uses to which resources will be put.

Summaries of Papers Delivered at the 115th Annual Meeting of the American Statistical Association in New York City, December 27–29, 1955

Abstract The present section contains all available abstracts of papers presented at the 1955 national meeting of the American Statistical Association in New York. The sequence of presentation here is alphabetical according to author.

Summaries of Papers Delivered at the 113th Annual Meeting of the American Statistical Association in Washington, D. C., December 27 to 30, 1953

Abstract The present section contains all available abstracts of papers presented at the 1953 national meeting of the American Statistical Association in Washington, D. C. The sequence of presentation here conforms to a grouping of abstracts according to the various sessions at which they were delivered.

Note on Some Errors in “The Evidence of Periodicity in Short Time Series”

Abstract Several fundamental errors are in Truman Kelleys “The Evidence of Periodicity in Time Series.” These involve a confusion of numbers of observations and degrees of freedom, the interpretation of probabilities obtained in tests of hypotheses and the appropriateness of periodigram analysis for detecting the existence of periodicity in time series.