One very important inquiry in managerial economics concerns the interrelationship between the firm and society. Managerial economics can help to clarify the vital role business firms play in our society and to point out ways of improving their operations for society’s benefit. A business enterprise is a combination of people, physical assets and information (technical, sales, coordinative and so on). The people directly involved include stockholders, management, labor, suppliers and customers. In addition to these direct participants, all society is indirectly involved in the firm’s operations because businesses use resources otherwise available for other purposes (including air and water), pay taxes if operations are profitable, provide employment, and generally produce most of the material output for our society.
管理经济学中一个非常重要的问题是关于企业和社会之间的相互关系。管理经济学可以帮助澄清企业在我们的社会中扮演的重要角色，并指出如何改进企业经营以造福社会。企业是人、物、信息（技术、销售、协调等）的结合体。直接涉及的人包括股东、管理层、劳工、供应商和客户。除了这些直接参与者之外，所有社会都间接参与公司的经营，因为企业使用其他可用资源（包括空气和水），如果经营是有利可图的，就要缴税，提供就业机会，并且通常为我们的社会生产大部分物质产出。
Firms exist because they are useful in the process of allocating resources, producing and distributing goods and services. If social welfare could somehow be measured, business firms might be expected to operate in a manner that would lead toward maximizing some index of social well-being. Just which bundle of goods and services as well as which distribution pattern for the bundle would maximize social welfare is a complex, actually unanswerable, question. It is, however, one of the most vital questions facing us today.
企业之所以存在，是因为它们在分配资源、生产和分配商品和服务的过程中发挥了作用。如果社会福利能够以某种方式加以衡量，商业公司的经营方式可能会导致社会福利指数最大化。究竟哪一组商品和服务以及哪一组商品和服务的分配模式会使社会福利最大化，这是一个复杂的、实际上无法回答的问题。然而，这是我们今天面临的最重要的问题之一。
As a result, the electric company could charge high prices and earn excessive profits. Society’s solution to this potential exploitation is rate regulation. Prices charged by electric companies and certain other monopolistic enterprises are controlled and held down to a level just sufficient to provide stockholders with a “fair” rate of return on their investment. The regulatory process is simple in concept; but in practice, it is costly, difficult to operate, and in many ways arbitrary. It is a poor substitute for competition, but a substitute that is sometimes necessary.
因此，电力公司可能会收取高昂的价格，赚取过多的利润。对于这种潜在的开发，社会的解决方案是利率管制。电力公司和某些其他垄断企业收取的价格受到控制，并被压低到恰好足以为股东提供“公平”的投资回报率的水平。管理过程在概念上很简单，但在实践中，它成本高昂，难以操作，而且在许多方面是任意的。它不是竞争的可靠替代品，但有时却是必要的替代品。
A difficulty arises in the course of this development. Certain groups are likely to gain excessive economic power permitting them to obtain too large a share of the value created by firms. To illustrate, the economics of producing and distributing electric power are such that only one firm can efficiently serve a given community.
在这一发展过程中出现了一个困难。某些群体可能获得过多的经济权力，允许他们获得公司创造的价值的过大份额。举例来说，生产和分配电力的经济效益是这样的，只有一家公司能够有效地为特定的社区服务。
The traditional way of handling this matter in the United Stated has been through the economic and political systems. The economic system produces and allocates goods and services through the market mechanism. Firms determine what consumers desire, bid for the resources necessary to produce these products, and then make and distribute them. The participants — suppliers of capital, labor and raw materials — must all be compensated from the sale of the output. Further, the firm competes for the consumer’s dollar with other firms in the same and other industries. This process is “natural” in the sense that it occurs in all human societies as they develop.
在美国，处理这个问题的传统方式是通过经济和政治制度。经济系统通过市场机制生产和分配商品和服务。公司决定消费者的需求，竞标生产这些产品所需的资源，然后制造和分销这些产品。参与者——资本、劳动力和原材料的提供者——都必须通过销售产品得到补偿。此外，该公司还与同行业和其他行业的其他公司争夺消费者的资金。这个过程是“自然的”，因为它发生在所有人类社会的发展。
The third problem is that, under certain conditions, firms can exploit workers, so laws designed to equalize the bargaining power of firms and workers have been developed. These labor laws require firms to submit to collective bargaining and to refrain from certain “unfair” practices.
第三个问题是，在一定条件下，企业可以剥削工人，因此制定了旨在平衡企业和工人议价能力的法律。这些劳动法要求公司服从集体协商，避免某些“不公平”的做法。
The second problem in the economic development of society occurs when a limited number of firms serve a given market. If the firms compete with one another, no exploitation occurs; however, if they conspire with one another in setting prices, they may be able to obtain excessive profits. The antitrust laws are designed to prevent such collusion, as well as to prevent the merging of competing firms whenever the effect of the merger would be to lessen competition substantially. Like direct regulation, the antitrust laws contain arbitrary elements and are costly to administer, but they, too, are necessary if economic justice, as defined by the body politic, is to be preserved.
社会经济发展中的第二个问题发生在有限数量的公司服务于特定市场的时候。如果这些公司相互竞争，就不会发生剥削；然而，如果它们在定价时相互勾结，就可能获得过多的利润。反托拉斯法的目的是防止这种合谋，并防止在合并的效果将大大减少竞争的情况下合并竞争公司。与直接管制一样，反托拉斯法也包含武断的成分，并且管理费用高昂，但是，如果要维护政治体所定义的经济正义，反托拉斯法也是必要的。
The fourth problem by the economic system is that, in their production processes, firms may impose costs on society; for example, by dumping wastes into air or the water or by defacing the earth, as in strip mining. If a steel
经济系统的第四个问题是，在其生产过程中，企业可能对社会造成成本；例如，通过向空气或水中倾倒废物或污损地球，如露天采矿。如果一个钢铁
mill creates polluted air, which requires people to paint their houses in three years instead of in five years or to have their clothes dry-cleaned more frequently or to suffer lung illness, the mill is creating a cost to society in general, or a social cost. The steel company should be required to install pollution-control equipment or to pay fines equal to the social cost of the pollution; otherwise, the steel company is gaining at the expense of society, because the company is not paying its full social costs. Additionally, failure to shift social costs back onto the firm results in an economically inefficient allocation of resources between industries and firms. Currently some of the practices being applied to avoid this include the establishment of emissions limits both for manufacturing processes and for products that pollute (for example, autos), as well as the imposition of fines or outright closures of firms that do not meet these standards.
工厂制造了污染的空气，这就要求人们在三年内而不是五年内粉刷房屋，或者更频繁地让衣服干洗，或者患上肺病。工厂正在给整个社会造成一种成本，或者说是一种社会成本。应当要求钢铁公司安装污染控制设备，或者支付与污染的社会成本相当的罚款；否则，钢铁公司就是在以社会成本为代价获利，因为该公司没有支付全部社会成本。此外，如果不能将社会成本转嫁到企业身上，就会导致企业和行业之间的资源配置在经济上效率低下。目前为避免这种情况而采取的一些做法包括对制造工艺和污染产品（例如汽车）规定排放限制，以及对不符合这些标准的公司处以罚款或直接关闭。
All the measures discussed above — utility regulation, antitrust laws, labor laws, and pollution control restrictions — are examples of actions taken by society to modify the behavior of business firms and to make this behavior more consistent with broad social goals. Since these social measures all constrain firms, the economy of the United States could be called a constrained -enterprise system as opposed to a free-enterprise system.
上面讨论的所有措施——效用管制、反垄断法、劳动法和污染控制限制——都是社会采取行动改变商业企业的行为，使这种行为更符合广泛的社会目标的例子。由于这些社会措施都限制了公司，美国的经济可以称为受限制的企业制度，而不是自由企业制度。
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