Hodgson_Mythical Markets.pdf (352.46 kB)
Download fileHow mythical markets mislead analysis: an institutionalist critique of market universalism
journal contribution
posted on 2019-02-19, 14:40 authored by Geoff HodgsonMarket universalism refers to the non-metaphorical tendency to use the term market
to describe a wide variety of arrangements or processes in the real world. Using institutional criteria, this paper establishes some minimal necessary features of a market, to show that some particular arrangements are not markets. For example, while
mechanisms of competition and interaction are ubiquitous, ordinary conversation is
not literally a ‘market for ideas’ and much of politics is not literally a ‘political market’. Markets are not and cannot be universal. Yet market universalism overlooks
missing markets, the theory of which implies that we are in a world of second-best
solutions and that markets are not necessarily the answer to every economic problem. Also, by reducing politics to a form of ‘market’ economics, market universalism
downplays the distinctive, non-market nature of the political and legal spheres and
corrodes the conceptual separation of civil society from the state.
History
School
- Loughborough University London