This effect is an example of the "lock in" effect. The main work that has become a classic is Paul David's article: David P. Clio and Economics of QWERTY. American Economic Review. - 1985. - Vol. 75, No. 2 .. It consists in the fact that the location of the keys on the computer keyboard is not chosen optimally, not in the most convenient way in terms of typing capabilities, that is, just such a set of qwerty letters in a row is not optimal, but it is for such a set all users are accustomed to. In other words, not the most successful variant of using the sequence of typing letters on the keyboard has been formed, but no one is going to change and relearn it, since it has become a common practice, accustomed agents to just such a sequence of letters, formed and fixed the keyboard adaptation model proposed by A. Dvorak and W. Deely, is considered the most optimal option for the arrangement of letters, as it provides the highest typing speed, which has been empirically proven, but it has not received the same distribution as a keyboard with qwerty keys. The fact that Apple computers were supposed to switch to the Dvorak keyboard did not ultimately lead to this keyboard becoming widespread. It should be especially noted that there are works, in particular, by S. Liebovitz and S. Margolis, who doubt that the Dvorak keyboard is more optimal than the qwerty-standard keyboard. The advantage of one standard over another is related to the arguments against the presence of "traps", which I cite above and in a number of my previous works, especially in terms of analyzing the ratio of efficiency / inefficiency and taking into account the specifics of engineering work, which is not taken into account by most economists, who, unfortunately, are far from , from understanding the essence of this work and a true analysis of the rules that regulate and define it .. Now the costs of relearning and changing the set of letters will significantly exceed the costs of adaptation, and therefore, these actions are not necessary. It seems that such effects also arise due to the presence of the learning effect, when agents develop not the usual model of adaptation and adaptation, but rather the style of work, the habitual way of thinking, which in themselves are peculiar institutions that reinforce the current state of affairs.
The Qwerty effect is a vivid example of technological evolution that selects not the most acceptable branches of development. If in the future a more perfect technical result becomes obvious, it will be difficult to change the situation, which will require costs, in particular, to change the arrangement of letters on the keyboard, another keyboard. Even with proven economic effect such a change, it will be problematic to implement the change itself. This is not always the case, but some set of cases from the development of technology can be cited, as can be cited examples that run counter to this effect and show that there are opportunities to correct an incorrect technical, technological solution.
The Qwerty effect is a typical example of a design error that has not been fixed and which then eliminated the conditions for its own fix. The reason for fixing such an error is: technological interdependence, standardization of technical activities, economies of scale and the established order of obtaining and using knowledge, that is, learning methods that make retraining difficult or impossible. This example tells us that in the field of social evolution, in contrast to the biological, the principle of "natural selection", which allows you to select the best result, operates in a completely different way, and the idea of the best result is different from the stereotyped idea. If investments are made in a sub-optimal technology solution, then it becomes difficult to redirect investments, or make additional investments to change the situation or the emerging standard. In addition, the increasing productivity of the newest device, as well as the increasing productivity of labor due to the introduction of this device into production operations in the control system, as well as the provision of services, more than compensate for the technical design error that created a not quite optimal standard, in particular, with regard to to the keyboard. In addition, the habituation of operators to a given layout of letters on the keyboard, in case of necessary changes, also leads to the costs of retraining and "re-accustoming", which are not rational and justified, because they can reduce productivity at the first stages, which will not be compensated by the benefits of correcting the specified design errors. In the development of technology and technology, such errors are often encountered, since at the design stage it is far from always clear which physics will be the best when creating a particular device. Examples are known from microelectronics and the development of special process equipment for the electronics industry. Yes, back in Soviet time, based on the fact that the prospects for which physics would turn out to be the best were unclear, two Angstrem and Mikron plants were created in Zelenograd, which essentially made similar products, but using different technological methods, because it was not clear which method, which technology will prevail over the competition over time.
The existence of the qwerty effect leads to interesting conclusions about the introduction of technical standards and regulations that can fix design or technical decision making errors. The formed qwerty keyboard standard is very good example. The consolidation of this standard, even though there is a more effective alternative, is not only due to purely economic reasons. Here, the time of following a seemingly less effective alternative becomes important, the effect of getting used to it, the scale of distribution are different. psychological reasons. An irreversibility in use is formed when the ratio of performance does not give the agent a sense of great gain in case of changing the keyboard, but it certainly causes irritation and frustration due to the very change in the arrangement of letters. The algorithm for winning an inefficient solution is about the same as fixing a monopoly on a product or market share of a company. Moreover, in the field of science-intensive products, this right is additionally fixed through patents, copyright certificates of large financial investments in R&D, which turn into any achievements in the field of creating new products.
Techniques and technologies develop consistently, in this development there can be no gaps or any unexpected jumps. Unless fundamental science prepares completely different principles and conditions for the development of technical devices, giving rise to new way or a new type of product that changes the face and nature of human life, for example, mobile phone(the principle of cellular communication) or a computer that is also used as an independent tool for managing production and individual elements human life. But in the general case, the improvement and development of technical systems occurs sequentially by the method of increasing the result, sometimes by the method of "trial and error". The presence of the qwerty effect essentially means that the social structure and institutions “intervene” in the process of systematic improvement of technology, and they clearly violate the process of systematic improvement. The nature of the organization of competition, the rules of this process, have a strong influence on the ability and interest of firms to change the keyboard or other technical solution, to introduce their own competing standard that can increase print productivity. And if this parameter is not limiting in the functioning of the economic system? It is in this case that there is no need to change the standard and increase such productivity. The requirements for the interchangeability of components and parts of machines and devices is an institution that largely determines the nature of the development of technical systems. If the emergence of competing principles, technical standards, devices can shake the supremacy of the principle of interchangeability, then the emergence of such a dichotomy can give rise to two vectors for the development of technical systems, which on an economic scale can lead to even higher costs than those that would be observed even with the development of helluva scenario. One of the problems is that P. David, the discoverer of the qwerty effect, referring in his classic work to B. Arthur, who established the properties of a process characterized by increasing returns, is that in relation to technical solutions, as a rule, an engineer does not have an urn with different-colored balls, and does not have the ability to take a ball out of the urn, returning it back, with the addition of one more ball of the same color, so the probability of adding a ball of the same color is an increasing function of the proportion in which this color is represented in the urn, and the proportion of one of the colors with probability. 100% tends to one. There is simply no such possibility due to the specifics of engineering work and obtaining appropriate technical solutions. Of course, the development of design methods here determine the result, but the random factor in the choice of technical solution retains its strong influence. Of course, the level of training of engineers is also important, although less competent people can arbitrarily offer the best solution, which will be fixed in the design of a technical device.
Most likely, the choice of a standard, when the superiority of one or another technical solution is not obvious, is subject to the principle of satisfaction, that is, obtaining an acceptable satisfactory result, which then undergoes rapid institutionalization, that is, it is overgrown with a system of rules that make it difficult to change the standard and the generally accepted method until in principle, this one will be more capable of being revised and canceled as a result, for example, of the emergence of systems that provide printing of text from voice, and, at the same time, translating text into different languages With necessary level spelling accuracy. Such systems are already beginning to appear, and, apparently, they will be the future of the development of this technical sector of information processing and presentation, and printing, of course, is a way of presenting information.
Thus, we can talk about the presence of an apparent “lock in” effect. This again emphasizes the difficulty in determining the property of the developmental trajectory of the past, in relation to technical and socio-economic systems. Of course, this difficulty imposes some requirements on institutional planning related to how agents manage time as a resource and what transactions they carry out. The purpose of planning institutions should be precisely to determine time as a resource and the types of transactions and behaviors of agents that can manifest themselves on a given trajectory of economic and institutional development. Qwerty effect on special technical systems, which is caused not by a discrepancy between the tastes of manufacturers and consumers, but by the content side of the design of technical systems /
The adoption of any technical solution may turn out to be obviously ineffective, and an effective solution will not be found. In such a case, a standard for the application of a given assembly or part or method of processing may arise, which will last for some time, but may well be revised or canceled. Therefore, the most important condition for the presence of this effect is the availability in its identification and the duration of action, which immediately takes it out of the usual design error into a different plane. Although by and large, there is no fundamental difference at all. Only in one case is it possible to correct it, even if the action time is long, and in the other, it fails, although it is then necessary to demonstrate that the efforts to correct it are sufficient, and not just talk about the need to change the order of the letters on the keyboard. Special inefficient technological solutions do not have that wide consumer effect as the keyboard, and therefore the example with the keyboard is special, exceptional, and therefore not indicative, especially since there are works based on ergonomic studies that cast doubt on the validity of this effect. In any case, the presence of such effects, if they are really some special effects, which there are reasonable doubts about, is associated with the dysfunction of institutions and the inability to foresee the effectiveness of future technical solutions and the future of technologies and features of technological development. Why should a more efficient technological alternative be rejected? Because the effectiveness of a technology cannot be discovered before it is applied, and it is far from always possible to apply both technologies at once. This is the same problem as with the evaluation of institutional changes - it will become possible to talk about the effectiveness of which only when they are passed, implemented. Otherwise, we can only talk about the expected effectiveness and the estimated assessment of the worthiness of the development option.
As you can see, time becomes a very significant limitation in assessing the effectiveness and rationality of technical solutions, in introducing new institutions, in determining the reactions of agents and forming models for their adaptation. Time determines the quality of transactions, as well as their effectiveness, as well as the effectiveness of managerial and other decisions, including decisions aimed at choosing one or another technical device. All these issues constitute, on the one hand, the difficulties of institutional planning, on the other hand, they determine the list of tasks that must be solved within the framework of institutional planning methods.
27. QWERTY effects
QWERTY effects in modern scientific literature mean all sorts of relatively inefficient but persistent standards that demonstrate that "history matters".
These effects can be detected in two ways:
- or to compare actually coexisting in modern world technical standards,
-or compare implemented technical innovations with potential ones that have not been implemented.
Although the modern economy has long been globalized and unified, in different countries ah of the world continue to maintain different technical standards that are not compatible with each other. Some examples are well known. In addition to the well-known history with keyboards typewriters, from which, in fact, the term QWERTY effects2 came from, one can cite, for example, the differences between left-hand (in the former British Empire) and right-hand traffic on the roads of different countries. This forces some automakers to put the steering wheel on the cars on the left, and others on the right. Other examples are less well-known, such as differences in rail gauge or transmission standards.
Perhaps QWERTY effects appeared only relatively early in economic history? No, they manifest themselves in the era of scientific and technological revolution. Examples often cited are the formation of television equipment standards (the 550-line standard in the US compared to the best 800-line standard in Europe), video cassettes and CDs, the development of the software market, and so on.
28, 29, 30.
From QWERTY nomics to economics of standards
and alternative economic history technologies
The name of the Path Dependency theory is usually translated in Russian literature as “dependence on previous development” 3 . She also draws attention to institutional change and the role of institutions in technical change. However, if in the "North" new economic history the main emphasis is on the revolutionary impact that legal innovations and changes in transaction costs have on socio-economic development, then in the theory of dependence on previous development, the main attention is paid to the inertia of development. In other words, if the followers of D. North study how institutional innovations become possible, then the followers of P. David and B. Arthur, on the contrary, study why institutional innovations are far from always possible. In addition, if D. North, when studying institutions, focuses on property rights, then P. David and B. Arthur focus on informal choice mechanisms.
Since both of these aspects are related to each other, like heads and tails, there is an intensive interaction and mutual enrichment of these two institutional theories of economic history. It is characteristic that D. North in his book “Institutions, Institutional Changes and the Functioning of the Economy” very quickly responded to the ideas of “recent economic historians” that were just beginning to gain popularity and included them in his concept as one of its key components.
The formation of the theory of Path Dependency began in 1985, when P. David published a short article 4 devoted to such a seemingly minor issue as the formation of a standard for printer keyboards. He argued that the well-known QWERTY keyboard for printing devices was the result of the victory of a less efficient standard over more efficient ones. The study of the economic history of technical standards, begun after the pioneering work of P. David and B. Arthur, showed an unusually wide distribution of QWERTY effects in almost all industries.
By QWERTY effects in the modern scientific literature, they mean all kinds of relatively inefficient but persistent standards that demonstrate that “history matters”. These effects can be detected in two ways −
or to compare technical standards that actually exist in the modern world,
or compare implemented technical innovations with potential ones that have not yet been implemented.
Compared to studying the competition of different technical standards, the analysis of "failed economic history" is somewhat more speculative, but also more promising. The point is that, according to many historians-economists, some technical innovations that won due to market circumstances blocked other, potentially more effective ways of development.
The theory of dependence on the previous development and close to it Scientific research on alternative history are based not on neoclassical "economics" (like the "Vogel" new economic history), but on the metascientific paradigm of synergetics associated with the ideas of the famous Belgian chemist Ilya Prigozhin (also Nobel laureate), creator of the theory of self-organization of order from chaos 5 . According to the synergetic approach developed by him, the development of society is not rigidly predetermined (according to the principle “no other way is given”). In fact, there is an alternation of periods of evolution, when the development vector cannot be changed (movement along the attractor), and bifurcation points, in which the possibility of choice arises. When "QWERTY Economists" Talk About Historical Accident initial choice, they consider just the bifurcation points of history - those of its moments when there is a choice of any one possibility from a fan of various alternatives. The choice in such situations almost always takes place in conditions of uncertainty and instability of the balance of social forces. Therefore, during a bifurcation, even very small subjective circumstances can turn out to be fateful - according to the principle of the “Bradbury butterfly”.
So, after numerous studies of QWERTY-effects, historians-economists discovered with amazement that many of the symbols of technological progress around us acquired a look familiar to us as a result of, in general, largely random circumstances, and that we do not live in the best of all worlds. .
From QWERTY nomics to economics of Path Dependency
and alternative economic history of institutions
The most important of the new ideas proposed in the development of the original concept of P. David is that the victory of the initially chosen standards / norms over all others, even relatively more effective, can be observed not only in the history of technology development, but also in the history of the development of institutions . In the 1990s a lot of research has appeared, including the work of Douglas North himself, developing this new direction of using the QWERTY approach. The English scientist D. Puffert directly stated that “the dependence on the previous development for institutions is likely to be quite similar to the dependence on the previous development for technologies, since both are based on the high value of adaptation to some general practice (any technique or rules), so that deviations from it become too costly.
If, when describing the history of technical innovations, they often write about QWERTY effects, then in the framework of the analysis of institutional innovations, they usually talk about Path Dependency - dependence on previous development. However, the two terms are often used interchangeably. P. David himself defined Path Dependency as follows: “dependence on previous development is such a sequence of economic changes in which distant events of the past can have an important impact on the possible result, moreover, more random events than systematic patterns” 7 .
In the history of the development of institutions, manifestations of dependence on previous development can be traced at two levels - firstly, at the level of individual institutions (legal, organizational, political, etc.), and secondly, at the level of institutional systems (especially national economic systems).
To date, a lot of research has accumulated that analyzes the dependence on the previous development and in the formation of the institutions themselves - the gold standard, common and civil law systems, the central bank, etc.
An important contribution to the economic theory of institutional change was made by the Russian economist Viktor Meerovich Polterovich, who examined, using the example of the post-Soviet economy, such a curious kind of dependence on previous development as the "institutional trap" 8 . The point is that among the development paths there are options that are more profitable in the short term, but in the long term they are not only less effective than alternative ones (foreign economists considered just such cases), but they do further development simply impossible. This was, in particular, the effect of the development of the barter economy in post-Soviet Russia: it made it possible to temporarily solve the problems of inefficient enterprises, but made any decisive restructuring of production impossible.
As for the comparative analysis of national economic systems as the institutional framework of economic evolution, it has a rather long tradition in economic science. One can recall at least the textbook for Russian social scientists of the older generation the works of V.I. Lenin (for example, “The Agrarian Program of Social Democracy in the First Russian Revolution of 1905-1907,” written in 1908), dedicated to the comparison of the Prussian (Junker) and American (farm) ways of developing capitalism in agriculture 9 . He emphasized that the main brake on the development of capitalism in Russia is precisely the feudal heritage, which manifests itself not only in landownership, but also in communal land use. In foreign historical and economic science, one can recall, for example, the theory of echelons of development of capitalism according to A. Gershenkron 10, according to which the path of development of a country is “programmed” for centuries to come by whether it was able to come to capitalism on its own (the first echelon), or external influence initiated internal sources self-development (second tier), or capitalism remains an “additive from outside” (third tier). D. North worked in the same vein, pointing out the deep and insurmountable differences between the development Latin America, which inherited the institutions of backward Spain, and North America, which developed under the influence of more advanced English institutions.
While works on QWERTY effects in the history of technology often emphasize the randomness and opportunism of choosing the winning technology, Path Dependency researchers in the development of institutions have this motif much weaker. Apparently, the choice of institutions, in contrast to the choice of technologies, is more collective in nature, and therefore it is more natural 11 . Both directions are related in that researchers emphasize the high inertia of social development, which makes it impossible to quickly change both the technologies used and the prevailing norms.
1 is typical for the analysis of moral hazard problems with covert action.
2 Actually, the diametrically opposite situation also deserves attention - the complementarity of tasks from the point of view of the agent in combination with their substitutability for the principal.
3 Strictly speaking, such a simplified translation is not entirely correct, since it is fraught with a simplification of the essence of the phenomenon. Everything in the world depends on the past in the sense that nothing comes from nothing. The meaning of the Path Dependency theory is that the possibilities of the choice that is made "here and now" are rigidly determined by the choice made "somewhere and sometime before."
4 David Paul A. Clio and the Economics of QWERTY // American Economic Review. 1985 Vol. 75. No. 2.
5 S. Margolis and S. Liebowitz, in their encyclopedic article on Path Dependency, make it clear that “predevelopment dependence is an idea that came into economics from intellectual movements that originated in another area. In physics and mathematics, these ideas are associated with chaos theory” (Margolis S.E., Liebowitz S.J. Path Dependence // The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics and Law. Ed. by P. Newman. L.: Macmillan, 1998). See also: Borodkin L.I. "Order out of chaos": concepts of synergetics in methodology historical research// New and recent history. 2003. No. 2. S. 98-118.
6 Puffert Douglas J., 2003a. Path Dependence, Network Form and Technological Change // History Matters: Essays on Economic Growth, Technology and Demographic Change. Ed. by W. Sundstrom, T. Guinnane, and W. Whatley. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003 ( http://www.vwl.uni-muenchen.de/ls_komlos/nettech1.pdf). See also: David P. Why are institutions the “carriers of history”? Path dependence and the evolution of conventions, organizations and institutions // Structural Change and Economic Dynamics. 1994 Vol. 5. No. 2.
7 David Paul A. Clio and the Economics of QWERTY // American Economic Review. 1985 Vol. 75. No. 2. R. 332.
8 Polterovich V.M. Institutional traps and economic reforms// Economy and mathematical methods. 1999. V. 35. No. 2.
9 See, for example: Lenin V.I. PSS. T. 16. S. 215-219.
10 Herschenkron A. The approach to European industrialization: a postscript // Economic Backwardness in Historical Perspective: A Book of Essays. Cambridge (Mass.), Harvard University, 1962, pp. 353-364.
11 However, another explanation is also possible – it is psychologically more difficult to model an alternative version of institutional history than to imagine a different version of technology development. It is enough to turn to alternative history as a genre science fiction: writers “invented” steampunk (an alternative history of modern and contemporary times, where there are no gasoline engines), but in the design of alternative institutions they cannot come up with anything more original than extending or shortening the “lifetimes” of fascism, communism, etc.
QWERTY effects in modern scientific literature mean all types
relatively ineffective but enduring standards that demonstrate that "history matters".
These effects can be detected in two ways:
- either to compare technical standards that actually coexist in the modern world, or to compare implemented technical innovations with potentially possible ones, but not implemented.
Standards that coexist.
Although the modern economy has long been globalized and unified, different countries of the world continue to maintain different technical standards that are incompatible with each other. Some examples are well known. Apart from known history With typewriter keyboards, from which, in fact, the term QWERTY effects came, one can cite, for example, the differences between left-hand (in the former British Empire) and right-hand traffic on the roads of different countries. This forces some automakers to put the steering wheel on the cars on the left, and others on the right. Other examples are less well-known, such as differences in rail gauge or transmission standards.
Perhaps QWERTY effects appeared only relatively early in economic history? No, they manifest themselves in the era of scientific and technological revolution. Examples often cited are the formation of television equipment standards (the 550-line standard in the US compared to the best 800-line standard in Europe), video cassettes and CDs (the victory of the VHS standard over BETA), the development of the software market (the victory of DOS / WINDOWS over Macintosh ), etc.
At the symposium at the HSE, D. Kotyubenko spoke about how technological QWERTY-effects hinder the development of electronic money settlement systems. It turns out that the previously introduced debit plastic cards and the old system of check settlements prevent the introduction of more advanced "electronic money" (chip cards) in developed countries. As a result, experts predict higher rates of transition to "electronic money" either by countries that are somewhat lagging behind in their development (like, say, Russia), or by countries with very strong state regulation (like, for example, Singapore).
Standards that could coexist.
Compared to the study of the competition of different standards, somewhat more speculative, but also more promising, is the analysis of "failed economic history." The point is that, according to many historians-economists, some technical innovations that won due to market circumstances blocked other, potentially more effective ways of development. The idea of comparing the effectiveness of actually implemented and potentially possible technological strategies was first expressed in the notorious book of the American economic historian P. Vogeli, published in 1964, "Railways and America's Economic Growth" .
It was traditionally believed that it was railroad construction that was one of the "locomotives" of America's rapid economic growth in the 19th century. Vogel tried to test the usual assessments of the transport revolution in the language of numbers. He built a counterfeit model - how the United States would develop if instead of "iron horses" its expanses continued to surf stagecoaches and steamships. The results of mathematical calculations turned out to be quite paradoxical: the contribution of railway construction turned out to be extremely small, equal to the national product in just a few months (in 1890, the US GNI would have been lower by about 4-5%).
A noisy discussion immediately flared up around Vogel's book. Critics rightly pointed out that the accuracy of his calculations is very arbitrary, since it is difficult to reliably measure what was not. Most importantly, Vogel's model abstracted away some important qualitative changes initiated by construction railways, in particular, because the acceleration of transportation made possible the production of new goods that otherwise would not have been produced.
David and other "QWERTY economists", while not attempting to quantify
alternative technological strategies, but widely use a qualitative comparison of the real with the potential. Moreover, if Vogel admitted that in real history the most effective variant still won, then David's followers admit the possibility of winning just the inefficient variant.
One example of this kind is the history of nuclear energy. The modern "peaceful atom" is, in essence, a by-product of " cold war"because the first nuclear power plants 1950-1960s were intended primarily to show the possibility of peaceful use of technologies originally intended for military purposes. This contributed to the adoption of light water reactors as a standard, but it is believed that alternative designs for civilian nuclear reactors(for example, a gas-cooled reactor), not genetically related to military technology, could be more effective.
So, after numerous studies of QWERTY-effects, historians-economists discovered with amazement that many of the symbols of technological progress around us acquired a well-known appearance as a result of, in general, largely random circumstances. This amazement is due to the fact that the theory of choice existing in economics is built mainly on the model of establishing an equilibrium market price, which occurs, as S. Tsirel pointed out, by trial and error in the process of a very large (in the limit - infinite) number of transactions. The number of acts of establishing a new standard is obviously limited: usually, several attempts are made to establish relatively inefficient standards, and then a certain sufficiently effective standard is established, which subsequently either is not adjusted at all, or is adjusted a small number of times. Therefore, achieving the optimal standard is not the rule, but the exception [Tsirel, 2005]. Thus, new approach to economic history helps to realize that the market mechanism does not optimize everything in the world.
R.M. NUREEV, Yu.V. LATOV
What is path dependence and how Russian economists study it.
12. The role of Path Dependence, QWERTY-effects in public administration: problem or opportunity.
"Path dependence" (dependence on previous development) is a concept that initiates the placement of new ontological accents in social sciences. Its formation takes place at a time when social transformations have reached an unprecedented uncertainty in terms of reflecting the dynamics of these changes in the social sciences. In this regard, any social problem that has the last basis of the problem of social time, during the transitional period, reveals itself from the point of view of the historicity of man and society. For Russia, with its "unpredictable", sometimes deliberately falsified past, path dependence is endowed with significant semantic and explicative potential, opening up new possibilities for integrating social memory into a single integrity. A comparative analysis of the conceptualization of path dependence in the domestic and Western traditions reveals the specific features of the opposition of time inherent in different cultures.
In the very general view it comes down to asserting the "meaning" of the past for the present and the future, and sounds trivial. The problem is to give it analytical efficiency. Here, it may be useful to turn to the concept of “pathdependence”, which is actively discussed in the framework of modern economic theory, i.e. depending on previous development.
It is far from speculative "historicism", as it is built to explain a very specific phenomenon - cases of victory of such technical standards that are not the best, most efficient and economical. This phenomenon cannot be explained within the framework of neoclassical economic theory, according to which competitive market mechanisms should lead to the selection of the most effective technical solutions. The answer of the pathdependence theory is that the initial choice is made in conditions of non-obvious advantages of one or another option and can be determined by random or "non-economic" factors. And then mechanisms begin to work - technical interdependence, increasing returns to scale, durability of capital equipment - that make it preferable (more profitable) for economic agents to use the established standard, rather than trying to introduce another, albeit technically more advanced. Choices made in the past under certain conditions predetermine choices made today when those conditions no longer exist. This is the dependence on the previous development.
The generalization of the pathdependence concept is connected with its development within the framework of neo-institutional economic theory, first when explaining why some countries demonstrate successful economic development for a long time, while others lag behind just as steadily. The answer was found in the differences in institutions that once established themselves in countries that had approximately the same starting opportunities for economic growth. Further analysis showed that in the history of institutions there are also pathdependence mechanisms - the effect of coordination, network effects, the durability of social capital. Forward-development dependency in the institutional realm is like pathdependence in technology—both based on the value of endorsing a common practice (in technique or in rules) that proves costly to change.
The problem of "institutional traps" has attracted close attention of economists and scientists studying economic processes in countries with economies in transition in the last ten years.
In the English-language literature, the “institutional trap” is most often used not as an “institutional trap”, but as a lock-in effect: according to North, this means that once a decision is made it is difficult to reverse (2). In terms of neo-institutional theory, "an institutional trap is an inefficient stable norm (an inefficient institution) that has a self-sustaining character" (3). Its stability means that if an inefficient norm prevailed in the system, then after a strong perturbation the system can fall into the "institutional trap", and then it will remain in it even when the external influence is removed.
As D. North notes, "an increment of changes in the technological field, once taken in a certain direction, can lead to the victory of one technological solution over others, even when the first technological direction, in the end, turns out to be less effective compared to the rejected alternative" (3 ).
A textbook example of such inefficient technological development was the problem of the QWERTY effect, described in the work of P. David (1) and further developed in the works of V.M. Polterovich (3) in relation to institutions and defined as an institutional trap.
Moreover, in this case, discussions about the degree of efficiency or inefficiency of the applied technology are relegated to the background, since the very possibility of the existence of QWERTY effects, named by analogy with the above example, and the search for solutions to the problems associated with them are of scientific interest.
From the point of view of the theory of transaction costs, the appearance of the QWERTY effect is explained by at least two reasons:
1. Mismatch of a number of interests of various groups of economic agents. The appearance of the QWERTY effect is the result of a partial disagreement between the interests of producers and consumers. The goal of manufacturers is to sell faster and more, to achieve this, the real arrangement of letters on the keyboard was adopted. The goal of consumers is 1) to improve the quality of paperwork (printed is more presentable and readable than written by hand) and 2) appeared a little later - to increase the speed of typing. Given the different compatibility of goals (neutrality, compatibility, incompatibility and the degree of effect from their interaction - neutral, increasing and decreasing), the goals of producers (sell more) and consumers (improve the quality of paperwork) can be considered compatible. However, subsequently, the combination of the number of sales and speeding up printing by changing the arrangement of letters on the keyboard are clearly incompatible goals. In this case, the result of whether we fall into the trap or not depends on the effect obtained from the imposition of goals. If buyers didn't have the first target, perhaps this would encourage manufacturers to look for faster lettering. However, the dual goals of consumers stimulated the initial demand and expansion of the production of QWERTY-efficient products, subsequently, economies of scale played a role.
Based on the foregoing, it follows that the QWERTY effect is one of the products and at the same time a fiasco of the supply-side economy, when the interests of producers prevail over the tastes and preferences of consumers.
Thus, a trap was formed, the exit from which was associated with high costs (retraining of typists already working on typewriters, the costs of resistance and the cost of retraining, reprofiling production to produce typewriters with a new keyboard, as well as the costs of changing the opinion of consumers about the lack of efficiency of these products ).
2. Mismatch of short-term and long-term interests. In this case, such a discrepancy is associated with the concept of "efficiency" and is largely determined by the incompleteness of information. Since economic agents have incomplete information, in particular about the future level of technology development, and sometimes due to the limited information in other areas of society (due to the physical and mental abilities of a person), it is wrong to talk about the effectiveness of certain technologies, methods of organization, we can talk only about comparative efficiency at the present stage of development.
Based on these two reasons, it is possible to explain the existence of a number of incompatible with each other, relatively inefficient standards: electricity transmission, different railway gauges, multidirectional traffic on roads, etc.
9. The role of the bureaucracy in the modernization processes. Is bureaucracy a "monster" or a "rational machine"?
Bureaucracy- this is a social layer of professional managers included in the organizational structure, characterized by a clear hierarchy, "vertical" information flows, formalized methods of decision-making, a claim to a special status in society.
Bureaucracy is also understood as a closed layer senior officials opposing itself to society, occupying a privileged position in it, specializing in management, monopolizing power functions in society in order to realize its corporate interests.
The term "bureaucracy" is used not only to refer to a certain social group, but also to a system of organizations created by public authorities in order to maximize their functions, as well as institutions and departments included in the branched structure of executive power.
The object of analysis in the study of bureaucracy are:
contradictions that arise in the implementation of management functions;
management as a labor process;
interests social groups involved in bureaucratic relations.
Weber's theory of bureaucracy
The emergence of the term "bureaucracy" is associated with the name of the French economist Vincent de Gournay, who introduced it in 1745 to denote the executive branch. This term entered the scientific circulation thanks to the German sociologist, economist, historian Max Weber (1864-1920), the author of the most complete and comprehensive sociological study of the phenomenon of bureaucracy.
Weber proposed the following principles for the bureaucratic concept of organizational structure:
hierarchical structure of the organization;
a hierarchy of orders built on legal authority;
subordination of a lower-level employee to a higher one and responsibility not only for their own actions, but also for the actions of subordinates;
specialization and division of labor by function;
a clear system of procedures and rules that ensures the uniformity of the implementation of production processes;
a system of promotion and tenure based on skills and experience and measured by standards;
orientation of the communication system, both in the organization and outside, to the written rules.
The term "bureaucracy" was used by Weber to denote a rational organization, the prescriptions and rules of which create the foundation effective work and allow to fight against favoritism. Bureaucracy was considered by him as a kind of ideal image, the most effective tool for managing social structures and individual structural units.
According to Weber, the strictly formalized nature of bureaucratic relations, the clarity of the distribution of role functions, the personal interest of bureaucrats in achieving the goals of the organization lead to the adoption of timely and qualified decisions based on carefully selected and verified information.
Bureaucracy as a rational management machine is characterized by:
strict responsibility for each area of work:
coordination in the name of achieving organizational goals;
optimal action of impersonal rules;
clear hierarchical relationship.
For the transitional period (from the aggregate of officials to the bureaucracy), these measures should be combined with the creation of motivation for officials in the implementation of the modernization project. The set of mechanisms is classic - high wages and a social package for those officials on whom the promotion of certain blocks of the modernization project depends.
However, an inevitable question arises here: what, in fact, is meant by a modernization project in modern Russia? What kind of bureaucracy Russian society will need will ultimately depend on the essential characteristics of this project.
Modernization project and perspectives of bureaucracy
A modernization project, regardless of its content, is a special case of an innovative project, i.e. a project of "targeted change or creation of a new technical or socio-economic system." The modernization project is characterized by the highest level of scientific and technical significance, surpassing in this indicator such types of projects as innovative, advanced and pioneer innovative
In modern Russia, the concept of "modernization project" has become quite widely used by experts since the beginning of the 21st century: back in 2001, at the International Foundation for Socio-Economic and Political Science Research (Gorbachev-Fond), a research group led by Doctor of Philosophy V. Tolstykh developed "Modernization project for Russia". In our opinion, its authors were relatively free from ideological "spells", and therefore they managed to make a number of intellectual breakthroughs. Of course, there was an ideology in the project (the following quote is appropriate in this case: "An important place in the formation of the Russian modernization project is occupied by the social democratic position regarding the dichotomy of "capitalism-socialism" [Modernization Challenge ... 2001], but its authors believed that the main thing is the modernization processes in the country, and not the formation of an ideological superstructure over them.
10. Basic provisions of the New State Administration.
Fundamentals of public administration
Public administration- this is the process of regulating relations within the state through the distribution of spheres of influence between the main territorial levels and branches of government. Public administration is based on the state interest aimed at protecting the integrity of the state, its key institutions, supporting the level and quality of life of its citizens. Among the priority areas in the implementation of the public (state) interest is the need to perform several functions: protective (defense), social, legal, economic, political and arbitration.
State power extends to objects located both on the territory of the state itself and outside it.
Main signs government authorities are:
o integrity;
o indivisibility;
o sovereignty.
Public administration implements the following functions.
1. Institutional - through the approval of the socio-economic, political, civil institutions necessary for solving state issues for the distribution of power.
2. Regulatory - through a system of norms and laws that establish general rules governing the behavior of subjects.
3. Goal-setting - through the development and selection of priority areas for the socio-economic and political development of the country; implementation of programs supported by the majority of the population.
4. Functional - through the development and implementation of actions aimed at supporting the entire economic infrastructure of the state in the face of its leading industries.
5. Ideological - through the formation of a national idea, designed to consolidate society within the boundaries of the state.
Main principles formation of the public administration system are as follows:
o separation of powers;
o complementarity;
o subsidiarity;
o sovereignty;
o democracy;
about homogeneity.
Principle separation of powers involves the division of the sole state power into three spheres: executive; legislative; judicial. This should serve as a condition for effective control over the activities of the state apparatus.
Principle complementarity characterized by a focus on continuity in the power structure. It assumes a uniform distribution of power functions in the context of the entire vertical of control at all territorial levels.
Principle subsidiarity implies a procedure for the distribution (and redistribution) of powers between the administrative levels of state power, i.e. the sequence of execution of power by administrative bodies and the procedure for distributing the responsibility of these bodies to the population. Transfer of authority to more high level management in accordance with this principle can be carried out only if it is impossible to execute them at the lowest level. The principle of subsidiarity has two dimensions: vertical and horizontal.
Vertical includes the distribution of power between levels of government in the direction from local to state.
The horizontal dimension covers the procedure for the distribution of powers between the branches of government at the federal, regional and local levels.
In accordance with the principle of subsidiarity, power should be distributed among power structures, mainly in connection with a reduction in the distance between the population and the authorities representing it.
Principle sovereignty presupposes the existence of actual independence as an essential feature of the state. State sovereignty means "the supremacy and independence of power subject to law, the monopoly of coercion within the limits of state powers, and the independence of the state within the framework of the international order." Being an attributive feature of the state, sovereignty implies a set of special institutions that ensure the status of an independent subject of international relations.
Principle democracy directs the population to the need for active participation: in decision-making of state and municipal significance; election of state and municipal authorities; development of territorial development programs based on mastering the mechanisms of public involvement in the current affairs of the region or municipality; allocation of zones of authority for public associations organized in the territories.
Principle homogeneity defines the advantages of federal law over regional law.
The essence of the principle of homogeneity is manifested in accordance with the subordination of regional legislation to federal legislation, which ensures the unity of the state and the universal subordination of all institutions of power to the Basic Law (Constitution of the Russian Federation).
According to Arthur and David, the situation in technological development characterized by dependence on the trajectory of the previous development if:
The choice of actually observed mass technology was not predictable;
This choice is almost impossible to change due to the magnitude of the costs that need to be implemented in a coordinated and simultaneous way (or within a short time);
A mass-produced technology is highly likely to be ineffective.
The emergence of such situations, in turn, is the result of the functioning of two mechanisms: a) increasing returns to scale; b) the impact of small random events.
Increasing returns are also a consequence of the interconnectedness of technology and improving skills in working with it as part of human capital, arising as a result of the learning process during the application of technology ( learning by using), as well as network externalities and non-movability of investments.
As an example, in particular, the QWERTY keyboard layout of typewriters, and then computers (QWERTY are the first six letters of the Latin keyboard layout). This arrangement arose because it avoided the clutching of levers when typing the most frequently repeated sequences of letters on mechanical typewriters. Subsequently, this drawback - the clutch of levers - was overcome, however, the keyboard qwerty already conquered the world. Typewriters with alternative, often more ergonomic layouts, were not in demand, including because most typists had typing skills on the keyboard qwerty, retraining them would be prohibitively expensive.
The mechanism of small random events, i.e. such events that could not be foreseen in advance by an outside observer with limited knowledge, is “responsible” for which of the available technologies is actually chosen, winning
1 David P. Clio and the Economics of QWERTY // American Economic Review.
1985 No. 75. P. 332-337.
Arthur B. W. Competing Technologies, Increasing Returns and Lock-in by Historical Events//Economic Journal. 1989 No. 99. P. 116-131.
in competition with functionally similar technologies. "Thanks" to him, such a victory is usually not associated with greater efficiency.
Subsequently, with the help of the concept of dependence on the trajectory of the previous development, they also began to analyze institutional changes. Institutional inertia is the reason that at a given moment in the institutional structure of the economy, some of the known institutional innovations - in principle more effective than those actually used - nevertheless, are not applied in practice.
At the heart of the phenomenon of institutional inertia lies, first of all, the limited rationality of economic agents who have chosen and began to massively master not the best institution, and, in addition, purely economic factors that make it inexpedient to change the institution because of the threat of significant costs.
An alternative view of institutional inertia is associated with the Schumpeterian and neo-Schumpeterian tradition of analyzing technological change. In accordance with it, technological changes are carried out within certain clusters, which are a limited range of technology options that can be formed from initial knowledge.
The described interpretations of the dependence on the trajectory of the previous development in the field of technological changes, when applied to the field of institutional changes, lead to significantly different assessments of the possibility of significant or abrupt changes in the institutional structure of economies. V dependent on institutional inertia.
According With the first of the interpretations, there are no restrictions on the content of the idea of a new institution (or system of institutions), except for restrictions on the creative abilities of individuals striving to form an institutional environment that best suits their interests. The idea of institutional change can also be borrowed or purposefully created, i.e. be designed. However, only that institutional change will enter mass practice, the benefits of which will exceed the costs of switching to following the new rule.
According to the second interpretation of institutional inertia, within the framework of the established institutional environment, ideas of institutional innovations that are not a recombination of the components of the rules that make up this environment cannot arise. Purposeful design of a new rule turns out to be, with this approach, fundamentally limited by the scope of diversity formed by the complete
enumeration of all possible combinations of the mentioned components. At the same time, a borrowed idea that does not fit into this framework is rejected not because of inefficiency (it does not matter - social inefficiency or inefficiency for special interest groups restructuring the institutional environment), but because of inconsistency with existing rules.
The experience of both technological and institutional change strongly argues in favor of the greater correctness of the interpretation of institutional inertia given in the works of Arthur and David and their followers. In other words, freely emerging ideas of innovation pass through a filter of selection according to the criterion of efficiency, which determines which of them (taking into account the effect of increasing returns and the randomness of the initial choice) will receive mass distribution. Historical heritage (whether physical or institutional) manifests itself within this concept not in a restriction on ideas, but in a specific structure of benefits and costs inherent in principle similar innovations competing for distribution in non-coinciding economic systems.
Note that the heuristic value of the concept of institutional inertia lies not in the possibility of a “universal” explanation of any difficulties that arise along the path of institutional transformation, but in drawing attention to the specific beneficiaries of the old rules, who, thanks to the latter, have economic and political opportunities that allow them to block potentially more effective innovations. .
The concept of the blocking effect was used by Douglas North to explain situations that are often encountered in practice, in which an institutional change that can significantly improve the conditions for the production of value, despite this, is not implemented in practice.
