Abstract
Business historians have developed a lively interest in the various roles that states played in the emergence of stable economic institutions. The state as an institutional actor helps enforce contractual commitments, property rights, and regulatory frameworks. An additional role of the state, which comes into focus here, is as a provider of goods and services. Inasmuch as these goods and services—like transport, healthcare, infrastructure, utilities, fuel, education, telecommunications, information, and entertainment—have to meet the needs of trade customers and citizens as their consumers, the state has to engage in information-gathering activities that help ascertain the specific needs of customers and citizens. In addition, it has to define ways to meet these needs in the most efficient and cost-effective way in order to ensure a “fit” between policies and end-consumers so that market actors can link up efficiently with lower search costs and risks (opportunity costs).
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Notes
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Schwarzkopf, S. (2012). Markets, Consumers, and the State: The Uses of Market Research in Government and the Public Sector in Britain, 1925–1955. In: Berghoff, H., Scranton, P., Spiekermann, U. (eds) The Rise of Marketing and Market Research. Worlds of Consumption. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137071286_8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137071286_8
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