Externalities
As noted in the last piece, the cost of providing the goods and services is just as important to suppliers as the price at which they sell the goods and services. The price is supposed to reflect the cost of doing business, but one must wonder how often that is true in Guyana. A common problem is the apparent exclusion of certain relevant factors from the computation of cost and hence the level of price. The factors being referred to here are described by Keohane and Olmstead in their book Markets and the Environment as the “direct, unintentional and uncompensated effects of the unwanted by-products of economic activities” that impose health and environmental costs on Guyanese and that are not captured by the market.
The contributing variable is what the writers refer to as externalities.
