№ 2019/2

The article aims to actualize the importance of entrepreneurial knowledge and competition for the disclosure of society’s economic potential, as well as to consider the reasons limiting the development of entrepreneurship and competition in Ukraine.
The prism of the Austrian Economic School highlights the peculiarities of entrepreneurial knowledge, the nature of entrepreneurial activity, the coordinating role of entrepreneurship and competition, the role of competition in the discovery of implicit knowledge, the infinite nature of entrepreneurial discoveries, and the practical inability to teach entrepreneurship. The prognostic function of entrepreneurship is revealed. The impossibility of accurate scientific predictions, including on the basis of the application of mathematical methods, which is conditioned by the constant changeability of the market environment as a result of unceasing entrepreneurial activity is emphasized.
Based on the fact that entrepreneurship and competition by their nature have endless development potential, the article emphasizes that if this is not observed, the reasons need to be seen not in the absence of internal and / or external positive incentives, but in the presence of external negative factors that restrict and / or suppress them. These negative factors are divided into conditionally natural, or objectively predetermined, and conditionally artificial, or formed. Taking into account that the possibilities of eliminating or mitigating objective factors through economic policy measures are limited or ineffective, it is argued that the special task of economic policy can only be to reduce artificial restrictions. After all, they are directly predetermined by the activities of public authorities and/or are the result of the dominant ideas, values and norms of behavior in society.
Therefore, the policy of stimulating and / or directing entrepreneurship development is op-posed to the policy of minimizing the influence of factors that are caused by those measures of the state policy that reduce or distort the motivation to engage in entrepreneurial activity.

Keywords: entrepreneurship, competition, entrepreneurial knowledge, economic policy, Austrian economic school