I.C.N.I.E.

Sumber: kompas.com

Jika masyarakat dihadapkan pada pilihan mengurus surat izin mengemudi dengan biaya: di atas seratus ribu dan di bawah seratus ribu, sudah pasti opsi kedua yang akan diambil. Masalah apakah yang mengeluarkan SIM itu kepolisian atau pihak lain, bahkan swasta, tidak jadi soal.

Kira-kira seperti itulah salah satu ilustrasi reformasi kelembagaan yang sudah berjalan di Jerman. ”Ini sekadar contoh bagaimana biaya transaksi itu menjadi isu penting untuk rasionalisasi birokrasi. Biaya transaksi yang lebih murah menjadi salah satu ukuran efektivitas birokrasi,” jelas Direktur Eksekutif Indef Ahmad Erani Yustika.

Jika biaya transaksi untuk memberdayakan birokrasi lebih besar ketimbang menggunakan institusi privat, pelayanan publik itu bisa ditransfer kepada pihak yang bisa melakukannya dengan lebih efektif.

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Oleh: David R. Henderson
Sumber: www.econlib.org

“Rent seeking“  is one of the most important insights in the last fifty years of economics and, unfortunately, one of the most inappropriately labeled. Gordon Tullock originated the idea in 1967, and Anne Krueger introduced the label in 1974. The idea is simple but powerful.

People are said to seek rents when they try to obtain benefits for themselves through the political arena. They typically do so by getting a subsidy for a good they produce or for being in a particular class of people, by getting a tariff on a good they produce, or by getting a special regulation that hampers their competitors.

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Douglass C. North
Sumber: nobelprize.org

I
Economic history is about the performance of economies through time. The objective of research in the field is not only to shed new light on the economic past but also to contribute to economic theory by providing an analytical framework that will enable us to understand economic change.

A theory of economic dynamics comparable in precision to general equilibrium theory would be the ideal tool of analysis. In the absence of such a theory we can describe the characteristics of past economies, examine the performance of economies at various times, and engage in comparative static analysis; but missing is an analytical understanding of the way economies evolve through time.

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