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Most information is not generally available; it is endogenous to some particular individual. The implication is that social coordination benefits rom InstItutional structures that encourage the use of endogenous informitIon; that is, those structures that 'provide inducements which will make individuals do the desirable things without anyone having to tell them what to do' (Hayek [1945] 1949: 88); a second implication is that endogenous knowledge makes any ex post appraisal of past decisions difficult, because only the decision-maker is ever in a position to know what he knew.

ibid. p. 45

Prosperity derives from profits earned by those who 'discover ew ways of doing things better than they have been done before' (Hayek [1946J 1949: 101), Bankruptcies are important to processes of discovery in which efficiency and ingenuity are tested in open competition.

p. 45-46

Yet, objective mowledge .only exists in rhe dispersed, incomplere, and inconsistenr form I which it appears in many individual minds, and rhe dispersion and lperfeceion of all knowledge are tWO of the basic faces from which the social sciences have to start' (Hayek 1952a: 50). The scientific problem is 'how the "data" of different individuals on which they base their plans are adjusted to the objective facts of their environment (which includes the ion of other peopJe)' (Hayek [1946J 1949: 93). ( ibid p. 44)