Profit Maximization and the Market Selection Hypothesis
检验竞争性企业是否必须像利润最大化者那样行事，否则就会破产。模型显示，最大化预期股利折现总和的企业必然在有限时间内失败，而其他行为可能长期存活，因此长期存活的企业未必是利润最大化者。
We examine the proposition chat competitive firms must behave as if they were maximizing profits; otherwise they would go bankrupt, or even fail to be financed in a competitive capital market. We investigate a model in which an entrepreneur raises funds for a risky enterprise on a competitive capital market, by offering a "dividend policy" based on the realized (stochastic) flow of earnings. We show that an entrepreneur who maximizes the expected sum of discounted dividends is sure to fal1 in finite time. On the other hand, many other behaviours yield positive expected profits and are able to attract investment funds, and yet result in a positive probability of surviving forever. As a consequence, if new firms have sufficiently diverse behaviours, then even if there is a constant stream of new entrants, after a long time practically all of the surviving firms will not have been maximizing profit.