LAW & ECONOMICS: Harold Demsetz and Crossing Disciplinary Boundary
Nesta nota introduzo o argumento de Demzetz para o êxito dos programa de pesquisa interdisciplinar envolvendo a Economia e o Direito. O ponto de partida de Demsetz é que a despeito da ênfase da Adam Smith a especializção, o fato é que
“[…] interdisciplinary work involving economics is not an entirely new phenomenon. Darwin, writing in the nineteenth century, for example, drew on ideas he found in the eighteenth-century works of Smith and Malthus. Rousseau, Hobbes, and Hume were not ignorant of economic writings of their times, nor was Adam Smith ignorant of the ideas of these political philosophers. However, success does not accompany all interdisciplinary efforts, and I offer here a condition for success that is somewhat different from that which has been offered by others.” 161
A despeito dessa evidência reconhece as limitações de duas justificativas emblemáticas para o sucesso do empreendimento interdisciplinar, envolvendo a Economia: a de Gary Beck e a de Jack Hirshleifer.
Com relação a justificativa de Gary “Gary Becker (1976), ele ressata que o mesmo
“[…] attributes the successes of economics to the relentless and unflinching application of the “combined assumptions of maximizing behavior, market equilibrium, and stable preferences.” [DEMSETZ, 2011:161
Enquanto que ressalta que Jack Hirshleifer (1985, p. 53) oferece uma explicação diferente, ou seja,
“What gives economics its imperialist invasive power is that our analytical categories — scarcity, cost, preferences, opportunities, etc. — are truly universal in applicability. Even more important is our structured organization of these concepts into the distinct yet intertwined processes of optimization on the individual decision level and equilibrium on the social level of analysis.” [DEMSETZ, 2011:161apud HIRSHLEIFER, 1985]
Como ele não concorda com nenhuma das duas justificativas para o êxito do projeto interdisciplinar envolvendo a Economia ele apresenta a sua explicação a qual é fundamentada na natureza do problema central nas para as duas disciplinas:
“work — commonality between the central problems that guided the independent development of the interacting disciplines. Lack of commonality stands as a barrier to successful interaction, even if the interacting disciplines bring quality tools and insightful perspectives to a problem. The concepts and tools peculiar to a discipline owe their existence to the problems the discipline has sought to resolve. Finally, tailored concepts and tools from one discipline will not be of much help to another discipline if the problems these disciplines address are quite different, [DEMSETZ, 2011:162]
E, neste registro que ele justifica o êxito projeto da Law and Economics:
“Much of the successful interaction between law and economics, for example, has its source in common concerns about problems of ownership and contract […] Even those who are not so enthusiastic about interdisciplinary work miss the importance of commonality of problems to interdisciplinary success. This claim is based on specialized knowledge in the two disciplines, but it fails to recognize that this specialization arises from the sort of problems practitioners in the two fields investigate. It also is a claim about the staying quality of economistsin other disciplines and not about the longevity and impact of their tools and methods. These may have lasting effects even after the delivering messengers have returned to their home disciplines.” [DEMSETZ, 2011:162]
E avança nesta direção ao considerar que uma etapa importante na configuração das condições de possibilidades de uma integração do Direito e a Economia no “registro” coseano foi o livro de The Modern Corporation and Private Property (1932) de autoria de um economista e de um jurista os quais :
“[…] perceived to be the serious problem of a separation between ownership and control. Unlike the firm of neoclassical theory, in which full control is simply presumed to be exercised by a firm’s owner, the corporation, with its ownership divided across thousands of equity shareholders, seemed to have no internal linking of ownership and control. Berle and Means claimed that control had shifted from owners of the firm to professional managers, who need not be, and often were not, significant holders of equity shares. Their work not only energized corporate law, it also drew the attention of economists to the inner workings of the firm; again, a unifying of interests”
E, reconhece que a partir este reconhecimento da centralidade de uma dimensão da propriedade ele reconhece que o arremate final desta integração decorre do
“[…] R. H. Coase’s (1960) attack on the doctrinal perception economists held toward the externality problem that had been highlighted in the work of A. C. Pigou during the first decade of that century. A side effect of Coase’s work was to make economists aware of another neglect of neoclassical economics. It had developed its model of perfect decentralization by assuming implicitly, but not at all by discussing, the existence of a functioning private property system. Private ownership of resources, Coase argued, would eliminate the externality problem, at least if the cost of using the price system was zero. The questions of how to define private property and how to explain its existence became important and were attended to by economists familiar with Coase’s work. Legal scholars had wrestled with problems of property law for some time, but without a theory of property, and so, once again, we had a joining of the interests of these two disciplines. As a result of the importance now attached to monopoly, to the inner workings of the firm, and to private ownership of resources, the new interdisciplinary field — law and economics — came to life. This probably is the most successful interactive effort to date that involves economics.” [DEMSETZ, 2011:166]
Logo, só resta concordar com o Mestre.
BIBLOGRAFIA
BECKER,, G. S. (1976) The Economic Approach to Human Behavior (Chicago:
Univ. of Chicago Press).
BERLE, A. A., & MEANS, C. G. (1932) The Modern Corporation and Private
Property. (New York: Macmillan).
COASE, Ronald H. (1978) Economics and contiguous disciplines. J Legal Stud
7: 201–11
DEMSETZ, H. (1997) The primacy of economics: An examination of the comparative success of economics in the social sciences. Econ Inquiry: 1–11
DEMSETZ, Harold., 2011 ”Crossing Disciplinary Boudaries” IN From Economic Man to Economic System (Essays on Human Behavior and the Institutions of Capitalism).Cambridge: Cambridge Universty Press, 2011
HIRSHLEIFER, Jack. (1985) The expanding domain of economics. Amer Econ
Rev 75(6): 53–68