ABSTRACT
This chapter offers a short introduction to “market indeterminacy,” borrowing heavily from work by Russell Hardin. The idea of indeterminacy has been floating around the economics and game theory literature for some time, and in fact is the very basis of game theory. Hardin suggests, however, that in many of these discussions indeterminacy “is constantly swept under the rug because it is often disruptive to pristine social theory.” The chapter discusses two features of indeterminacy – strategy and complexity – that contribute to the instability of outcomes. It presents several cases of increasing strategy and complexity to suggest that one pathway to resolve indeterminacy is through discursive coordination at the right action level. The chapter primarily serves as an attempt to shift our gaze away from individual solutions to collective problems that are ensconced in complicated economic markets.
