ABSTRACT
If by microeconomics one means the study of the allocation of resources at the level of the individual economic unit and transaction, then Gardiner Means had a conception of how the microeconomy operates that is fundamentally at variance with that held by most mainstream economists and certainly that manifest by the Chicago School—except, in this latter regard, in one fascinating respect. There is no conclusive independent test of when a price is set by administration and when by the market; all prices are enunciated by people; markets do not issue price lists. There also is no conclusive independent test of when a price is flexible and when inflexible. The centerpiece of Means’s approach to microeconomics is the predominance of administered prices which tend to be inflexible in practice. In the draft of his doctoral dissertation Means wrote that the separation of ownership and control eliminated barrier posed by wealth of individual owner to further extension of size of the enterprise.
