----------------- HES POSTING ----------------- Dan Bromley wrote: "Markets are not ends but instruments. For some purposes they can be agreeable instruments. For other purposes they can be most disagreeable." I would welcome further explantion from you, Dan: what purposes? "Agreeable"?.... On the other hand, Governments too can be viewed as instruments....but the interesting question is: of which set of interests in what countries and at what times? I have just returned from my first visit to a Central Asian country, and Dan's use of the phrase "those whose current social and economic advantage is reinforced and validated by the existing structure of institutional arrangements" is certainly redolent of this and perhaps all other countries in the former Soviet Union and even perhaps of other so-called "developing" countries. In "developed" countries, on the other hand, government seems to function at least a little more effectively in the medium term as a means of moderating between various groups of interests (pure capitalists, wage-earners who are also capitalists, "mere" wage earners (i.e. wage earners without capital), those who are unemployed and perhaps unemployable, those needing capital for various purposes, those who would like to encourage investment in relatively "safe" areas of the economy versus those who would like to encourage investment in more "risky" areas of the economy, those interested in the environment, those intersted in the development of other countries, et al). Can any HES participants from Comparative Institutional Analysis or other areas help me to understand whether I am completely off the track in the previous paragraph? prabhu guptara ------------ FOOTER TO HES POSTING ------------ For information, send the message "info HES" to [log in to unmask] ------------ FOOTER TO HES POSTING ------------ For information, send the message "info HES" to [log in to unmask]