Vanishing Hand
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Vanishing Hand
The Vanishing Hand theory is a concept first conceived of by economist Richard Normand Langlois. The term is an intentional play on both Adam Smith's invisible hand and Alfred Chandler's Visible Hand. Background In Smith's work, his invisible hand describes the self-regulating behavior of the market. In essence, this theory states that individual personal motivations lead to the most efficient allocation of resources and greatest overall benefit, even if those motivations were not in any way benevolent. This is exemplified by relatively small firms operating with no market control. Competition between buyers and sellers channels the profit motive causing competition to lead to socially desirable outcomes. During Smith's time and much after, this was a justification for a laissez-faire ''Laissez-faire'' ( ; from french: laissez faire , ) is an economic system in which transactions between private groups of people are free from any form of economic interventionism (su ...
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Richard Normand Langlois
Richard Normand Langlois (born January 20, 1952 in Putnam, Connecticut) is an American economist and currently professor at the University of Connecticut. He studied physics and English literature at Williams College, he received a Master's in astronomy from Yale University, and he received his PhD in ''Engineering-Economic Systems'' from Stanford. Since May 2008, Langlois is also a contributor to the bloOrganizations and Markets He is attributed with first presenting the Vanishing Hand theory. Literature * 1982, Subjective Probability and Subjective Economics. New York : NY, C.V. Starr Center for Applied Economics, NYU, FAS, Department of Economics, Working Paper * 1984, Kaleidic and Structural Interpretations of Genuine Uncertainty. New York : NY, C.V. Starr Center for Applied Economics, NYU, FAS, Department of Economics, Working Paper * 1986, ''Economics as a Process: Essays in the New Institutional Economics.'' New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986. xi, 262 p. : ill. ; ...
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Adam Smith
Adam Smith (baptized 1723 – 17 July 1790) was a Scottish economist and philosopher who was a pioneer in the thinking of political economy and key figure during the Scottish Enlightenment. Seen by some as "The Father of Economics"——— or "The Father of Capitalism",———— he wrote two classic works, ''The Theory of Moral Sentiments'' (1759) and ''The Wealth of Nations, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations'' (1776). The latter, often abbreviated as ''The Wealth of Nations'', is considered his ''magnum opus'' and the first modern work that treats economics as a comprehensive system and as an academic discipline. Smith refuses to explain the distribution of wealth and power in terms of God's will, God’s will and instead appeals to natural, political, social, economic and technological factors and the interactions between them. Among other economic theories, the work introduced Smith's idea of absolute advantage. Smith studied social philos ...
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Invisible Hand
The invisible hand is a metaphor used by the British moral philosopher Adam Smith that describes the unintended greater social benefits and public good brought about by individuals acting in their own self-interests. Smith originally mentioned the term in his work ''Theory of Moral Sentiments'' in 1759, but it has actually become known from his main work ''The Wealth of Nations'', where the word itself is mentioned only once, in connection with import restrictions. Similar ideas had already been presented before Smith by other Enlightenment thinkers, such as Anders Chydenius in his work ''The National Gain'' (1765) and Bernard Mandeville. Liberal thinkers wanted to show that society functions without collapsing even without the old hierarchical order of the feudal era. The concept was first introduced by Adam Smith in ''The Theory of Moral Sentiments'', written in 1759. The exact phrase is used just three times in Smith's writings. Smith may have come up with the two mea ...
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Alfred D
Alfred may refer to: Arts and entertainment *''Alfred J. Kwak'', Dutch-German-Japanese anime television series * ''Alfred'' (Arne opera), a 1740 masque by Thomas Arne * ''Alfred'' (Dvořák), an 1870 opera by Antonín Dvořák *"Alfred (Interlude)" and "Alfred (Outro)", songs by Eminem from the 2020 album ''Music to Be Murdered By'' Business and organisations * Alfred, a radio station in Shaftesbury, England *Alfred Music, an American music publisher * Alfred University, New York, U.S. *The Alfred Hospital, a hospital in Melbourne, Australia People * Alfred (name) includes a list of people and fictional characters called Alfred * Alfred the Great (848/49 – 899), or Alfred I, a king of the West Saxons and of the Anglo-Saxons Places Antarctica * Mount Alfred (Antarctica) Australia * Alfredtown, New South Wales * County of Alfred, South Australia Canada * Alfred and Plantagenet, Ontario * Alfred Island, Nunavut * Mount Alfred, British Columbia United States * Alfred, Main ...
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The Managerial Revolution In American Business
''The'' () is a grammatical article in English, denoting persons or things that are already or about to be mentioned, under discussion, implied or otherwise presumed familiar to listeners, readers, or speakers. It is the definite article in English. ''The'' is the most frequently used word in the English language; studies and analyses of texts have found it to account for seven percent of all printed English-language words. It is derived from gendered articles in Old English which combined in Middle English and now has a single form used with nouns of any gender. The word can be used with both singular and plural nouns, and with a noun that starts with any letter. This is different from many other languages, which have different forms of the definite article for different genders or numbers. Pronunciation In most dialects, "the" is pronounced as (with the voiced dental fricative followed by a schwa) when followed by a consonant sound, and as (homophone of the archaic pr ...
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Profit Motive
In economics, the profit motive is the motivation of firms that operate so as to maximize their profits. Mainstream microeconomic theory posits that the ultimate goal of a business is "to make money" - not in the sense of increasing the firm's stock of means of payment (which is usually kept to a necessary minimum because means of payment incur costs, i.e. interest or foregone yields), but in the sense of "increasing net worth". Stated differently, the reason for a business's existence is to turn a profit. The profit motive is a key tenet of rational choice theory, or the theory that economic agents tend to pursue what is in their own best interests. In accordance with this doctrine, businesses seek to benefit themselves and/or their shareholders by maximizing profits. As it extends beyond economics into ideology, the profit motive has been a major matter of contention. Economics Theoretically, when an economy is fully competitive (i.e. has no market imperfections like extern ...
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Laissez-faire
''Laissez-faire'' ( ; from french: laissez faire , ) is an economic system in which transactions between private groups of people are free from any form of economic interventionism (such as subsidies) deriving from special interest groups. As a system of thought, ''laissez-faire'' rests on the following axioms: "the individual is the basic unit in society, i.e. the standard of measurement in social calculus; the individual has a natural right to freedom; and the physical order of nature is a harmonious and self-regulating system." Another basic principle of ''laissez-faire'' holds that markets should naturally be competitive, a rule that the early advocates of ''laissez-faire'' always emphasized. With the aims of maximizing freedom by allowing markets to self-regulate, early advocates of ''laissez-faire'' proposed a ''impôt unique'', a tax on land rent (similar to Georgism) to replace all taxes that they saw as damaging welfare by penalizing production. Proponents of ''l ...
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Ann Bartel
Ann Pelcovits Bartel (born September 15, 1949) is the Merrill Lynch Professor of Workforce Transformation at the Columbia University Graduate School of Business and a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research. She graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1970, and completed her PhD in economics at Columbia University in 1974. Research Bartel's dozens of published papers have included such topics as employee training, human capital investments, job transitions, and the impact of technological change on productivity, worker skills, and outsourcing Outsourcing is an agreement in which one company hires another company to be responsible for a planned or existing activity which otherwise is or could be carried out internally, i.e. in-house, and sometimes involves transferring employees and ... decisions. Selected works * Bartel, Ann P. "Productivity gains from the implementation of employee training programs." Industrial relations: a journa ...
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Vertical Disintegration
Vertical disintegration refers to a specific organizational form of industrial production. As opposed to vertical integration, in which production occurs within a singular organization, vertical disintegration means that various diseconomies of scale or scope have broken a production process into separate companies, each performing a limited subset of activities required to create a finished product. Filmed entertainment was once highly vertically integrated into a studio system whereby a few large studios handled everything from production to theatrical presentation. After the second world war, the industry was broken into small fragments, each specializing on particular tasks within the division of labor required to produce and show a finished piece of filmed entertainment. Hollywood became highly vertically disintegrated, with specialized firms who only performed certain tasks such as editing, special effects, trailers etc. Bell System divestiture had a similar effect on a large ...
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