Shit Happens! (parte II)

Parte I.

"Hutchinson formalized naturalistic images of the niche of biotic populations and defined the fundamental niche of a population as the hypervolume of environmental space formed by the set of points for which the population's growth rate (fitness) is nonnegative. In other words, the fundamental niche consists of the set of all environmental conditions in which the population can grow or at least sustain its numbers. By extension, the fundamental niche of an organizational form consists of the social, economic, and political conditions that can sustain the functioning of organizations that embody the form.
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If two organizational populations rely on completely different kinds of resources and depend on different kinds of social and political institutions, then their fundamental niches do not intersect. Otherwise, they do intersect, and so it makes sense to measure their similarity in terms of the degree of intersection or overlap.3 Intersection in fundamental niches might be thought of as potential competition. In general, the potential for two populations to compete is proportional to the intersection of their fundamental niches. It follows that two populations compete if and only if their fundamental niches intersect.

When two or more populations with intersecting fundamental niches occupy the same system, the expansion of one population changes the conditions of the others' existence. In the case of competition, the presence of the competing population reduces the hypervolume of environmental space in which another population can sustain itself. Hutchinson coined the term realized niche to refer to the restricted environmental space in which a population's growth rate is nonnegative in the presence of competitors. The realized niche is a subset of the fundamental niche and in most realistic cases it is substantially smaller than the fundamental niche.

Except in the highly unusual case of a population isolated from all competitors, all that can be observed in any empirical setting is the realized niche. Suppose that a pair of populations compete for a resource and that one of them can exclude the other from the full range of overlap of their fundamental niches. In this case, the realized niche of the stronger competitor coincides with the fundamental niche, but the realized niche of the weaker competitor is smaller than its fundamental niche. Interestingly, the two realized niches do not intersect in such cases. It follows from the general principles that the absence of an observed niche intersection does not imply the absence of competition in other portions of fundamental niches."

Continua com os price takers, Sraffa e salário mínimo.
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Trechos retirados de "Dynamics of Organizational Populations - Density, Legitimation, and Competition" de Michael Hannan e Glenn Carroll.

Sraffa e a concorrência imperfeita

Na passada segunda-feira, durante uma caminhada, fui surpreendido pelo trecho que se segue:

"Thus, in Sraffa, abandonment of the hypothesis of perfect competition means abandoning a particular theory; that is, a theory that sees competition as a situation in which expansion of firms is halted by rising costs. Far from being restricted to very special circumstances, the hypothesis that firms should be regarded as single monopolies functions better than perfect competition, in accounting for the evidence; that is, that the expansion of firms is halted not by raising costs but by the limitation of demand. Sraffa's insight, "by showing how limited is the domain of applicability of perfect competition, and by breaking the spell, so to speak of the perfectly elastic demand that faces the perfect competitor"

E, parei de ler, repetindo de cor, inúmeras vezes, aquela frase:

"the expansion of firms is halted not by raising costs but by the limitation of demand"

E volto aquela figura da semana passada:

Em Mongo, não faz sentido medir a produtividade de uma empresa contando caudais de quantidades físicas produzidas por unidade de tempo. Em Mongo, faz todo o sentido medir produtividade com base nos resultados financeiros. Por exemplo, com base no rácio entre as vendas e os custos.
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Na terça-feira passada, auditei uma empresa (sector transaccionável) que nos últimos anos aumentou os seus custos deliberadamente, acrescentando operações de fabrico que mais ninguém no seu sector faz, para se diferenciar e, conseguir preços unitários superiores. Recordar a lição de Rosiello no Evangelho do Valor. Entretanto, já mais que duplicou o emprego e a área ocupada. A expansão não é limitada pelos custos mas pela existência ou não de procura.
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Em 2010, escrevi aqui no blogue acerca do truque alemão, para lidar com os custos elevados. Os custos são altos? Sim! Podem ser baixados? Não! Então, o que fazer? Correr o mundo à procura da procura que valoriza o que se produz.
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Ainda outra lição alemã acerca dos custos "We are not cost cutters".
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Em todo este racional, no qual baseio a minha vida profissional, há um senão.
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Na próxima parte vamos desenvolver o ponto que pode pôr por terra toda este racional.
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Continua.
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Trecho retirado do capítulo "The First Imperfect Competition Revolution" de Maria Cristina Marcuzzo, de um livro que não consigo identificar.