Entrepreneurship and the Market Process An Enquiry into the Growth of Knowledge

A theory of entrepreneurship is crucial to a theory of the market process. Mainstream economics has failed to tackle adequately the problem of how economic agents improve their knowledge in a disequilibrium setting.

" Entrepreneurship and the Market Process" redresses this need by developing a dynamic theory of entrepreneurship. David Harper applies Karl Popper's ideas, developed in the context of the growth of scientific knowledge, to economic behavior. The methodological approach sucessfully applies Popper's philosophy to the problem of how entreprenaurs learn in the light of experience and feedback from the market. As such, it provides a valuable new view of the market process as a learning procedure for generating and testing entrepreneurial ideas.

Enterpreneurship is central to the market process, and yet most theories of it fail to tackle the problem of how economic agents learn from their experience. This book redresses this by systematically applying the ideas of Karl Popper. It treats the entrepeneur as a theorist who develops conjectures which are then tested by exposure to the market, in an effort to eliminate errors. This is a critical aspect of the development of new ventures, as most entrepeneurial ideas turn out to be mistakes, at least in their original form.