Custos sociais: Onde para o mercado?

• Main Author: Vítor Neves
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Centro de Estudos Sociais da Universidade de Coimbra 2011-12-01
• Series: Revista Crítica de Ciências Sociais
• Subjects: cost‑effectiveness analysis; externalities; market; market failures; social costs; social value
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/rccs/4368

The markets represent a powerful economic coordination mechanism. Even so, their limitations cannot, and should not, be ignored. The wide range of costs originating from business activities within the framework of capitalism and subsequently externalised or, in other words, transferred to other agents or to society as a whole with no repercussions on price mechanisms, is one particularly striking example of these limitations. This article contrasts the different concepts of social costs existing in economics literature, ranging from the identification of the problem as a “market failure” to the more heterodox (and less well‑known) concept of K. William Kapp, according to whom social costs are an intrinsic and inevitable problem within the institutional context of capitalism. The nature of the problem is discussed initially, followed by a presentation, albeit brief, of two essentially diverging lines of argument in the prevailing conventional approach and the heterodox approach of Kapp: the concept of efficiency adopted and the way in which the question of valuation of social costs is viewed.