Nature of Competition: When to Compete

 

From time to time, we say “at the end of the day.” Most probably, that is at an occasion of reflection. In turn, such a reflection is for the purpose of performance evaluation over a certain period of time up to the end. The evaluation would rarely be for fun, but it must be for the sake of reflecting the past performance on the future activities in such a way as to improve efficiency, which is to be defined in UMT-1.  

             Apparently, however many and however great utilities are meaningless without reference to the period of evaluation, which we in economics call “the accounting period.” As such the question “when to compete” boils down how for us to name the accounting period.

             By nature and by construct in economics, the accounting period depends on the type, kind and sort of economic activity. After all, the right evaluation gives us the right reward: only the right causation brings us there, “never back to do,” or the means for that matter. The end must be higher at least by an octave than the means.  

 

At the household. We may legitimately idealize the accounting period to be the day of 24 hours or the week of seven days at the longest. By definition, special events are “exogenous to” the main equations. Idealization means taking care of the very basic routines. 

 

In the product market. The accounting period depends on the shopping cycle. For instance, the week for grocery shopping, a month for home supplies, a year for a long vacation and the like. Needless to say, the timing of going to the market is all different in reality, but for the purpose of communal accounting we suppose the accounting period to be the same as the general cycle in the community.

 

In the job market. The standard period would be a fortnight for wage earners, a year for salary earners, and a “lifetime” for “lifetime” employees as in Japan in the 20th century.

 

In the rental market. The rental period would be from five minutes of laundry machines to two years of residences to 10 years of warehouses and the like to 99 years for a leased land.

 

In the asset market. Here we focus on secondary trade of assets for “portfolio management” in light that the rationale of constructing new assets, that is, the gross domestic investment (I) as called in macroeconomics, is totally different. Then, the vast majority of trade is on financial instruments as opposed to physical assets. All in all, the account period might well be called to be the day. No wonder, so many financial indexes including DJIA are daily.  

 

Real in the commonwealth. The only competition is this fiscal year vs indefinitely many more in the future. Nevertheless, the national income accounting is annual (Y per annum), and the gross national consumption (C per annum) and the gross domestic investment (I per annum) competes against each other. Wait, we politically compete amongst us once every four years or so.

 

Nominal in macroeconomics. “The when” is out of question, altogether. If any, competition is across as many scenarios as the playwright wishes. In other words, the “when” question is switched with the “where” question.  For instance, the economy miles away over there will be so many times as large as, or as stable at least as, the one here.

 

"Do-Re-Mi" - THE SOUND OF MUSIC (1965)

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