Ludwig Erhard: Getting the Economy to Work

While Ludwig Erhard and other ‘ordo liberalists’ argued that the scope of government in the economy should be quite limited, they still believed that government had a role to play in providing the conditions for competitive markets to allocate resources via market prices.

In this video, Dr Matthias Dahm explains how governments regulate monopolies, guard against cartels and collusion, and maintain sensible policies concerning mergers, competition, and the protection of intellectual property.

While this list of government regulations may seem onerous to some, Erhard contends that these are necessary conditions for the proper functioning of competitive markets. Please share in the comments whether you think that it is the place of government to enact these types of policies.