Comment on Schumpeter by Deno Hervino

Teori Schumpeter

Teori Schumpeter ini pertama kali dituangkan dalam bukunya berjudul “The Theory Economic Development” yang merupakan sadur dalam bahasa Jerman. Lalu dijelaskan lebih lanjut dalam buku yang judulnya “Bussiness Cycle”

Inti dari teori pembangunan Schumpeter bahwa pembangunan ekonomi akan pesat hanya dalam sistem ekonomi kapitalisme, namun dalam jangka panjang sistem kapitalisme akan mengalami stagnasi (Pendapatan ini sama dengan pendapat dari kaum klasik).

Schumpeter menegaskan bahwa invosi dan entrepreneur merupakan generator dalam pembangunan ekonomi. Tersedianya para inovator, lingkungan sosial, politik, dan teknologi merupakan suatu syarat mutlak terjadinya proses inovasi. Dan tentunya ada satu faktor yang sangat penting juga yaitu tersedianya sistem perkreditan yang mampu menyentuh seluruh lapisan masyarakat.

Apa yang menjadi benefit bagi para inovator? Tentunya Schumpeter merinci bahwa siapapun yang behasil dalam melakukan proses inovasi maka akan menikamti hak monopoli dan tentunya keuntungan monopolis juga.

Lalu efek apa yang diharapkan terjadi setelah terjadi inovasi? Jawabannya, munculnya teknologi baru dan imitasi. Kedua faktor inilah yang akan memicu terjadi investasi dan akhirnya terjadi penyebaran teknologi ke masyarakat luas.

Kenapa dalam jangka panjang, kapitalisme akan stagnasi dan runtuh?

Karena dalam jangka panjang, snowball effect dari inovasi tersebut tentunya akan meningkatkan pendapatan per kapita masyarakat dan kemerataan distribusi pendapatan (karena inovasi akan membuat produknya bisa dinikmati orang banyak). Namun dengan semakin makmurnya masyarakat akan memicu terjadinya perubahan kelembagaan dan pandangan masyarakat yang semkain jauh dari sistem kapitalisme asli. Dimana sistem tunjangan sosial (bantuan tunai langsung) kepada para pengangguran, sekolah gratis, sistm asuransi, dll..

Inilah yang membuat sistem kapitalisme dalam jangka panjang runtuh dan beralih menjadi sistem sosialis.

Walking in other’s shoes

By Arsoni Buana

Economics has been for so long perceived as the science of human behavior. The decision coming out from an agent is a complex process involving so many things such as past knowledge, social environment and so on and so forth. Our society has been built from that complex process. Hence, analyzing a society never stands alone from the discussion of human behavior. That is why we see institutional economics nowadays as a branch of economics. The complex process of decision making is one of the institutional settings one can recognize in a society, in an economy. As we know, theory of regulation not only speaks economics in the boundary of market but it is more important than that: placing agent’s behavior in the very heart of economics (remind you on wage relation in the theory). Below is a story of human behavior when they take the perspective of others in their decision-taking process. The story is often called as “walking in other’s shoes” story in the literature.

Suppose that there is an impartial judge k who wants to share a certain amount of resources, let say c, to two members of society which are in conflict to a certain subject. In doing so, the judge identifies herself with those n group members (n>1) and then shares the sum c between them, maximizing an EU which is dependent of the state of the world:

(1)
subject to and
with for all i.



The social preference which results from a complete identification with others consists in making the final marginal utilities as equal as possible within the group. If the group members have highly different initial wealth but the same utility function, the transfers will first be allocated to the poorest, and will be highly unequal. This unique solution of the judge’s behaviour has two goods properties: it does not depend on the judge’s membership in a group and brings about Pareto-optimal allocations.

A caution should be considered as the judge should know exactly the preferences, the characteristics of the two conflicting parties in order to be able to “walk properly in the parties’ shoes”. If it does not hold the judge then tends to project in other way around: her own characteristics on those of the others. This principle of projecting his own characteristics on others has also underlined by Adam Smith and widely known as Principal of Smithian Sympathy. He stated:
“As we have no immediate experience of what other men feel, we can form no idea of the manner in which they are affected, but by conceiving what we ourselves should feel in the like situation. […] Every faculty in one man is the measure by which he judges of the like faculty in another. I judge of your sight by my sight, of your ear by my ear, of your reason by my reason, of your resentment by my resentment, of your love by my love. I neither have, nor can have, any other way of judging about them.” (Adam Smith 1982, pp. 9 et 19)

Beyond the market

By Arsoni Buana


We, put it as economist, kind of have a little concern to the things outside the boundary of market. To that, take the idea of neo-classical point of view, be more precisely the Chicago school, as an example. Another good example, it might be the neo-Keynesianism that appeared partly to correct the failure of the former mentioned school of thought. The construction of two relies on the fact that agent is rational and always maximizes his/her utility. Market is regarded as a place where agent coordinates each other while (s)he behaves to maximizes his/her perceived utility. Even neo-Keynesian approach admit the role of government intervention, a little place has been reserved for this role in the building of the ideal concept of free market competition.

Having a look to the Marxian tradition, it is more on the role of firm rather than that of market that drives all the vehicle of analysis. Through so called wage relation there is known a social relation that one could not find in the market terminology of the mainstream approach. When a laborer agrees to work and to accept certain condition of working given by an employer, there can be found a wage relation that also involves a social relation –not only market relation– between the two because, in that situation, which makes it different with the economy of market, it is known a vertical submission. A delegation of tasks from employer to worker cannot be seen as the same form of horizontal coordination among agent in the market.

If we combine market-type coordination with coordination similar to that of coordination in a firm and also with medium-to-long period of macroeconomic evolution then we will have beyond-the-market economics: School of Regulation.