44
‘best’
–
will permit an isolated monopoly to survive; the fact that such a firm
exist is no reason to supposing that it is securing maximum profits.
However, if there is intense competition, all policies save the ‘best’ may
result in negative profits, and in time elimination; then firms that survive
must, through some combination of good luck or good management, have
happened upon optimum policies. If environmental conditions are such that
surviving and competing firms earn zero profits, we can often assume that
they are securing maximum profits: it may then be justifiable to pretend that
these firms cleverly and deliberately equated marginal revenue and marginal
costs in all the various dimensions. However, this ‘as if’ approach can only
be
validly used for the special case of intense competition in the long run.
(ENKE, 1951, p. 571)
.
No
conceito de competição intensa que Enke usa, já está implícito que as firmas
maximizam seus lucros, de outra forma não seria possível dizer que a única possibilidade de
obtenção de lucros não negativos seria obtendo lucro zero. É impossível dizer qualquer coisa
mais precisa a respeito do lucro máximo possível do que notar que este não pode ser maior ou
igual ao lucro máximo de monopólio numa indústria, se não se assume que as firmas
maximizam seus lucros.
Mesmo adotando a perspectiva de longo prazo, a idéia de que as firmas que
sobrevivem por todo o período teriam lucro zero só se sustenta se for assumido que existem
infinitas firmas “bem
-
adaptadas” atuando na indústria.
Enke quase percebe o problema na passagem seguinte, mas o restringe ao caso em que
o ambiente se altera constantemente:
Unfortunately, as is well known, long-run equilibrium is in practice never
attained.
The processes of long-run adjustment are always being interrupted,
before their work has been completed, by some new autonomous event. This
has important repercussions. It means that maximum possible profits of the
moment may be far in excess of zero profits. It means that the essential
conditi
on of continued survival becomes the earning not of maximum profits
(including the case of zero profits), but of zero or positive profits (including
submaximum profits). Moreover, it means that the firms that exist at any
moment will include both those that are destined to survive and those that
are not. Hence the economist cannot proceed to predict actual aggregate
behavior, even for those firms that will survive, as if each one arranged its
affairs according to the precepts of marginal analysis. If the environment is
changing rapidly and unexpectedly, some poorly managed firms will survive
and some well managed firms will expire.
(
ibid.
, p.
571
-
572)