“the Invisible Hand Is Frail, but the Visible Hand Is Crippled.” (a) What Is Meant by “the Invisible Hand Is Frail”?

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Introduction The “invisible hand” is a metaphor created by Adam Smith with reference to the price mechanism which seeks to allocate resources, ration goods as well as provide incentives in an economy. However, the price mechanism is “frail” in that it is liable to fail in reality. Market failure is defined as the failure of the unregulated market system via the use of the price mechanism to achieve allocative efficiency because of the presence of externalities, demerit and merit goods, public goods and market imperfections or to achieve social goals such as an unequal distribution of income. Allocative efficiency is the situation in which the society produces and consumes a combination of goods and services that maximises its welfare. Therefore the society will produce goods and services such that the value society places on the last unit of the good (P) is equal to the opportunity cost in terms of resources used in producing that last unit (MC), that is, it is a situation when goods and services that are wanted by the economy are produced in the right quantities. Body An externality arises when in the production or consumption of a good, the well-being of a third-party is affected and yet the third-party neither receives nor pays any compensation for that effect. The presence of externalities causes divergences between private and social costs and benefits, i.e. MSC>MPC in the case of the negative externality and MSB>MPB in the case of the positive externality as illustrated in Figures 1 & 2 respectively. Assume that markets are perfectively competitive. Goods that generate negative externalities such as transportation and energy production will be overproduced as individuals (producers and consumers) disregard the external costs such as pollution and congestion, on third parties during decision-making. As such, they

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