Institutions in economy and their role Tough the responsibility of individual persons is primary, social thought does regard the role and functions of three main economic institutional entities: market, state and intermediate bodies. The presence of these institutions relates to the scarcity of resources in front of the huge number of potential users or consumers. The strategy adopted to solve this problem refers to the economizing principle, which calls for the most rational possible use of scarce resources through the creation of and the use of institutions.20 As the Compendium understands them, economic institutions are made principally to fulfil this principle. Their reason to be is to work in favour of the best possible ways in producing and distributing resources, means and final goods. These institutions might appear in concrete reality more or less mixed or separated; this may depend from many factors not merely economical but also traditional, cultural or political. Social teaching individuates these institutions in their most common forms of market, state and intermediate bodies. The following analysis places these entities in the framework of Roman Catholic social thought. Though the three will be treated in separate sections upon the view of RC social thought to realize the economizing principle there is the need to have a fruitful interaction between these three.
