Karl William Kapp

Karl William Kapp (October 27, 1910 – April 4, 1976) was a German-American economist, one of the founders of ecological economics and one of the leading 20th century institutional economists.

Sourced

• Social cost... are all direct and indirect losses sustained by third persons or the general public as a result of unrestrained economic activities.
  • Kapp (1963) Social Costs of Business Enterprise, Bombay: Asia Publishing. p.12. Cited in: M. Rangone & S. Solari (2012) "Southern European capitalism and the social costs of business enterprise". in: Studi e Note di Economia, Anno XVII, n. 1-2012, pp. 3-28

• To ignore social costs because they require an evaluation by society [...] and to leave social losses out of account because they are 'external' and 'non-economic' in character, would be equivalent to attributing no or ‘zero’ value to all social damages which is no less arbitrary and subjective a judgement than any positive or negative evaluation of social costs.
  • Kapp (1963) Social Costs of Business Enterprise, Bombay: Asia Publishing. p.12. Cited in: M. Rangone & S. Solari (2012) "Southern European capitalism and the social costs of business enterprise". in: Studi e Note di Economia, Anno XVII, n. 1-2012, pp. 3-28

• They [social costs] are damages or diseconomies sustained by the economy in general, which under different institutional conditions could be avoided. [. . .] if these costs were inevitable under any kind of institutional arrangement they would not really present a special theoretical problem. [. . .] to reveal their origin, the study of social costs must always be an institutional analysis. Such an analysis raises inevitably the question of institutional reform and policy.
  • Kapp 1963, p.186 cited in: Sebastian Berger and Mathew Forstater (2007) "Toward a Political Institutionalist Economics: Kapp’s Social Costs, Lowe’s Instrumental Analysis, and the European Institutionalist Approach to Environmental Policy". In: Journal of Economic Issues. Vol.XLI, No.2, June 2007. p.539

• Capitalism must be regarded as an economy of unpaid costs, ‘unpaid’ in so far as a substantial portion of the actual costs of production remains unaccounted for in entrepreneurial outlays; instead they are shifted to, and ultimately borne by, third persons or by the community as a whole.
  • K. William Kapp, The Social Costs of Private Enterprise (New York: Schocken Books, 1971), p.231. Cited in: Rania Ghosn (2012) "Where are the Missing Spaces? The Geography of some Uncommon Interests" in the Yale Architectural Journal Perspecta. Perspecta 45.

• Whenever social costs are shifted onto economically and politically weaker sections of society without compensation, a redistribution of the costs of production, hence real income is involved.
  • Knapp, 1972 cited in: Sebastian Berger and Mathew Forstater (2007) "Toward a Political Institutionalist Economics: Kapp’s Social Costs, Lowe’s Instrumental Analysis, and the European Institutionalist Approach to Environmental Policy". In: Journal of Economic Issues. Vol.XLI, No.2, June 2007. p.539

• Had there been a computer in 1872... it would probably have predicted that there would be so many horse-drawn vehicles that it would be impossible to clear up all the manure.
  • Quote about the computerized estimates of the end of the world. Cited in: Ian Murray (1972) "Workers told of peril of technology". In: The Times, April 16, 1972