DISCUSSION ABOUT THE ROLE OF STATE IN ECONOMY: THE STATE AS ECONOMIC ENTITY 1. Market and state as mechanisms of co-ordination and optimization of economic activity in the macroeconomic scale Institutional dichotomy: perfect market versus perfect state Paradigm of market versus paradigm of state Institutional dichotomy: imperfect state versus imperfect state Interdependence of market failures and state failures 2. Nature of economic function of the state from the perspective of market paradigm perfect competition as the mechanism leading to social welfare maximization (Pareto optimum) Nature of market failures and their types Market failures as the reason for public regulation in market economy 3. Public regulation from the point of view of market paradigm Broad and narrow definition of public regulation Public regulation and macroeconomic stabilization. Regulation of "real economy" versus regulation of financial markets (financial flows) - financial regulation in the light of globalization of financial markets Public regulation and social regulation Main instruments (tools) of public regulation (with respect to "real economy") Normative and economic approach towards the public regulation 4. Economic function of the state in the approach of state paradigm Point of reference: rejection of perfect market model and the view about its unreliability as the mechanism of social welfare maximization Diversification of reasons for and the scope to which the state should assist (permanently or temporarily) the market mechanism (Keynesian economics, Marxist economics, institutional economics, various streams in economics thought in developing countries) Role of the state in the ordoliberalism 5. Imperfect market versus imperfect state sources of failures of the state as the coordinative and optimization mechanism interdependence of state failures and market failures State as a quasi market and the critique of optimization functions of the state (dispute about the economic rationality under socialism and the critique of socialist command-and -control economic system within the neoclassical comparative economic studies) 6. Four levels of state's influence upon the economy public regulation macroeconomic stabilization microeconomic and institutional regulation structural and growth policy, and its components in the approach of market paradigm and state paradigm controversies about distributive functions of the state (with special regard to current financial and economic crisis) 7. Economic functions of the state under conditions of globalization and emergence of the so called New Economy 7.1. Changing significance of business cycles related and structural factors in the contemporary economic development Transnational corporations Changing character of capital markets under the influence of modern information and communication technologies Globalization of financial markets and its increasingly autonomous character with respect to real economy (production and distribution of goods and services) Regional economic integration 7.2. The need for looking for and defining economic functions of the state in heterodox economic streams Theory of Sustainable Development New Economic History Complexity economics Evolutionary economics Ordoliberalism