... repairable lapses of economic actors. There are two reasons for this neglect. First, in economies one assumes either fully and undeviating rational behaviour or, at the very least, an unchanging level of rationality on the part of the economic actors. Deterioration of a firms performance may result from an adverse shift in supply and demand conditions while the willingness and ability of the firm to maximise profits are not damaged, but it could also reflect some 'loss of maximising aptitude or energy' with supply and demand factors being unchanged. The latter interpretation would immediately raise the question how the firms maximising energy can be brought back up to par. Economists have typically assumed that a firm that falls behind or gets ahead does so 'for a good reason', the concept central to this book of a random and more easily 'repairable lapse' has been alien to their reasoning. The second ...

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