Alternative Organization The World of Perfect Competition Price as a Rationer When economists talk about price rationing, non-economists often do not understand. This article from AmosWeb explains the concept: http://www.amosweb.com/cgi-bin/awb_nav.pl?s=wpd&c=dsp&k=price+rationing Non-Price Rationing CyberEcononics explains rationing by coupon in the U.S. during World War II. Here are a couple of sites that look at rationing by coupons in the UK during World War II: http://www.woodlands-junior.kent.sch.uk/Homework/war/rationing.htm http://museum.woolworths.co.uk/1940s-byebye6d.htm Prices: Incentives and Communication Device A blog at Economist.com talks about the importance of information in prices, with a lengthy quotation from Friedrich Hayek: http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2007/04/the_power_of_prices.cfm Maybe I should have given something from Wikipedia here because it seems that the economics of information coming from Hayek was a source of inspiration for Wikipedia: http://www.reason.com/news/show/119689.html Price Controls Hugh Rockoff explains price controls in this long but informative entry in The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics: http://www.econlib.org/LIBRARY/Enc/PriceControls.html Coordination In this article in the New York Times entitled, "In Niger, Trees and Crops Turn Back the Desert," see if you can find the role of private property rights: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/11/world/africa/11niger.html?ex=1328936400&en=7bd7a234c9fbad51&ei=5124&partner=digg&exprod=digg Central Planning This long and rather bland article in Wikipedia explains planned economies: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_economy Suppressing Market Information Wikipedia takes a look at the economics calculation problem of socialism. This article has overlap with the piece about Hayek mentioned earlier: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_calculation_problem Dollar Voting Wikipedia comes through again with a short article explaining dollar voting: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dollar_voting Feedback The wikipedia entry on negative feedback is more readable and more pertinent to economics than their entry on feedback: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_feedback A Self-Correcting System   Web ingrimayne.com These links were checked on May 27, 2007 Copyright Robert Schenk