Pole A: Planning score 0
Deliberate coordination by collective targets. Common argument for it: markets alone fail on public goods, crises and inequality, and collective goals call for explicit decisions.
POLITICAL POSITION · DIMENSION 8 OF 12
Economic coordination: planning or free market
Economic coordination is the dimension that records how a person prefers the economy to decide what to produce, at what price and for whom.
What it is
Economic coordination is the dimension that records how a person prefers the economy to decide what to produce, at what price and for whom. At the Planning pole, the State steers investment, prices and output by targets; at the Free market pole, prices formed in voluntary exchange coordinate decisions, with minimal regulation.
What the dimension covers
- regulation of prices and wages
- industrial policy and directed credit
- the size of regulation and regulatory agencies
- taxes and incentives on economic activity
The two poles
0 · PlanningFree market · 100
Pole B: Free market score 100
Prices and voluntary exchange as coordination. Common argument for it: prices gather information no planner has, and the freedom to trade is part of individual liberty.
How the instrument measures it
The Evidence instrument (schema evidence-pol-1) records this dimension as a number from 0 to 100: 0 is the Planning pole, 100 is the Free market pole. The number comes from your answers to the questionnaire or from a result imported from another instrument by URL; either way it is a self-assessment, computed in your browser, and nothing reaches the server without an explicit action from you. With no answer for this dimension, it stays unknown (UNKNOWN), never 50.
| No. | Statement | Agreeing points to |
|---|---|---|
| 8 | The government should decide which sectors of the economy receive incentives and subsidized credit. | Planning |
| 20 | Wages, prices and interest rates should be set by supply and demand, with little government interference. | Free market |
| 32 | Prices of essential goods, such as food and fuel, should be controlled when they rise too much. | Planning |
| 44 | Cutting rules and licenses for opening and running a business would bring more benefits than risks. | Free market |
Formula p = (resposta - 1) / 4 if agreeing points to Free market; p = 1 - (resposta - 1) / 4 if it points to Planning; placar = 100 * media(p)
There are 4 original statements, with opposite directions to reduce the effect of agreeing with everything. Answers run from 1 to 5 (1 Strongly disagree, 2 Disagree, 3 Neither agree nor disagree, 4 Agree, 5 Strongly agree); "Don't know" does not score. Each answer becomes a position between 0 and 1, the score is the mean position times 100, and confidence combines coverage (how many of the 4 statements scored) and consistency (how far answers point the same way): high from 0.75, medium from 0.50.
In the Evidence portable format, this dimension is the markets parameter of the profile URL. Scale, evidence states and limitations are in the instrument method; the terms are in the glossary.
Why it is a separate dimension
It differs from Ownership, which is about who owns, and from Foreign trade, which is about the economic border with other countries. Here the question is who coordinates economic decisions within the country.
Compare with Ownership and Foreign trade.
Frequently asked questions
Does planning mean a socialist economy?
Not necessarily. The pole covers any deliberate coordination by the State, from investment targets to price controls, and it can coexist with private ownership.
How do other surveys measure this position?
The Chapel Hill Expert Survey asks experts to place parties on an economic left and right axis tied to the role of the State in the economy. Here the scale applies to a person's preference, not a party's.
What does a score of 50 on Economic coordination mean?
That the answers ended halfway between Planning and Free market, through balance or through a mix of answers in both directions. It is not the same as moderation or the political center, and it says nothing about the other 11 dimensions.
Is my result sent or published?
No. The computation runs in your browser, nothing reaches the server without an explicit action from you, and the result page is not indexed by search engines. Political opinion is sensitive personal data under Brazil's LGPD (art. 5, II, and art. 11).
Literature and references
- MarketsStanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: what markets do well, where they fail and the moral limits of exchange.
- Chapel Hill Expert SurveyParty positions on economic and cultural axes, rated by experts.
- Economic JusticeStanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: theories of how the economy should distribute resources.
Reference readings on the topic. None of them validates the Evidence instrument, and no text, question or weight was copied from them.
Conceptual sources of the instrument
How the economy is coordinated: targets, prices and credit steered by government (planning) or set by supply and demand (free market).
Other dimensions
- Related dimensionOwnershipPublic · Private
- Related dimensionForeign tradeProtectionism · Globalism
- PreviousOwnershipPublic · Private
- NextForeign tradeProtectionism · Globalism