Closing Remarks

Abstract

The clearest conclusion that this Conference has reached is that the market mechanism has not solved social problems and externalities, though it admitted a rather wide divergence of view on whether they can be corrected by price adaptations or by planning. At the other extreme all insisted on the value and actual application of micro-planning. The large corporation was given precedence in our discussions, but any enterprise was expected to undertake some forward arrangement of its affairs. The Conference touched upon, but did not much develop, the problem that the risk and uncertainty for small businessmen is greater than for a big firm, perhaps because the previous I.E.A. Conference in Czechoslovakia had already drawn enough conclusions in the volume Risk and Uncertainty already published.