Market History and Analysis

The argument of the following essay is that "the market" is an assumption that is both conventionalized and culture-bound. The assumptions that are made about the market--assumptions that govern conventional economic thought, and which are taught in most if not all basic economics textbooks--do not apply equally or in the same way within all societies, or for all groups within one society.

On a global level, the assumption that markets work the same everywhere may cause profound misperceptions about how some national economies function. The workings of the Japanese economy, for example, perhaps have less to do with some national Japanese economic strategy than with predispositions that are deeply rooted in Japanese culture, and which express themselves across the spectrum of employer-employee behavior within firms, transactions among firms, and the relationship of workers and firms alike with the state. On a national level, preconceptions about markets may distort our understanding of what is going on in a given economy. The global mobility of capital, for

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awe. It has converted the physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the man of science, into its paid wage-labourers. (Marx, p. 476) One may wonder if lawyers, at least, haven't always sold their services for the most part in some sort of market relationship, but Marx's real argument is that many relationships now arranged along market lines were once embedded within much more personalist, emotional, long-term relationships. People in ancient and medieval times certainly did not hire and fire their priests. The wandering bard like Homer perhaps sold his services in a sort of marketplace, but other poets accepted long-term client-patron relationships with wealthy individuals or households, relationships in which the role of exchange was muted. Two essential characteristics of the market are rationality and impersonality. The two are closely linked. If you go to a farmers' market to buy eggs, market theory proceeds from the assumption that you buy the cheapest eggs, or at any rate those eggs that are least expensive in relationship to your perception of their quality. If, instead, you buy eggs preferentially from a particular egg-seller, for example because she is your friend, even though her eggs may be more expensive or
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Some common words found in the essay are:
Robert Reich, Karl Marx, Samuelson's Economics, Ronald Dore, Wealth Nations, Barbara Bergmann, , Adam Smith, Jew Friedman, Japan United, economic life, american economy, division labor, chicago university chicago, chicago university, real world, adam smith, university chicago, japanese economy, wealth nations, market relationships, model market applies, development division labor, sold services sort,
Approximate Word count = 5034
Approximate Pages = 20 (250 words per page)

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