Alertness, Local Knowledge, and Johnny Appleseed
15 Pages Posted: 25 Jul 2011
Abstract
Anderson and Hill argue that property rights entrepreneurs, driven by non-replicable Kirznerian alertness, identify unowned and unpriced attributes of a resource and capture rents to those resources by limiting access to them. I argue that alertness is non-replicable, but it is also not random. Kirzner's analytical framework emphasizes an individual's local knowledge and subjective interpretative schema. Incorporating these concepts and emphasizing two types of local knowledge, about social and commercial conditions, explains why some people are alert to profit opportunities and others are not. This implies that economic restrictions are more detrimental to entrepreneurship than previously understood. I provide evidence by examining Johnny Appleseed's successful nursery business.
Keywords: Property Rights Entrepreneurship, Alertness, Local Knowledge
JEL Classification: D23, L26
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation
Do you have negative results from your research you’d like to share?
Recommended Papers
-
The Athenian Trierarchy: Mechanism Design for the Private Provision of Public Goods
-
By Robert K. Fleck and F. Andrew Hanssen
-
Jury Size in Classical Athens: An Application of the Condorcet Jury Theorem
-
From Epistemic Diversity to Common Knowledge: Rational Rituals and Publicity in Democratic Athens
By Josiah Ober
-
How Tyranny Paved the Way to Wealth and Democracy: The Democratic Transition in Ancient Greece
By F. Andrew Hanssen and Robert K. Fleck
-
On the Benefits and Costs of Legal Expertise: Adjudication in Ancient Athens
By F. Andrew Hanssen and Robert K. Fleck